


The Girl Downstairs

by itchyfingers



Series: Tom and Moira [1]
Category: Tom Hiddleston - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Hate at First Sight, Romance, younger woman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-03
Updated: 2014-01-22
Packaged: 2017-12-28 07:11:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 39,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/989210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itchyfingers/pseuds/itchyfingers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tom Hiddleston meets his new downstairs' neighbor under less than auspicious circumstances. And though the mouthy nineteen year old American wants nothing to do with him, he can't stop thinking about her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Tom opened the front door to his flat, wondering who would be knocking at three in the morning. Not that it was a nuisance; he’d been awake anyway. The door swung open to reveal a disgruntled girl staring at him, her short blonde hair mussed like she had been tossing and turning for hours or having really enthusiastic sex. Her dark thick brows were pinched together in irritation which made him discount the possibility of the second option. That was definitely not a sex face; at least not one he had encountered before.

“Are you a moron?” Her head bobbed with her vigorous enunciation of the last word.

Tom blinked in surprise at the verbal attack and ran a hand through his hair, setting the short curls askew. “Beg pardon?” Apparently insane Americans knocked on your door at three o’clock in the morning.

“Are you a cretin?” She stabbed him in the chest with a long finger. “Is there something physically wrong with you?” She stabbed him again and he took a step back. “That’s the only reason I can imagine that would prevent someone from looking at a damn clock and realizing that it’s three in the fucking morning and that maybe hammering on sheet metal while molesting a flock of geese could wait until daylight hours!”

His mouth fell open as he stared at her in confusion. “Molesting…what?”

“What are you doing in here?” She pushed past him into his flat. “What could you  _possibly_  be doing that makes that much noise?”

“Who…” His face scrunched together in utter befuddlement. “Who  _are_ you?” He watched as she stalked into his kitchen, her bare feet slapping against the floor. She opened the fridge, looked inside, and slammed it shut again before she stalked back out of the kitchen.

“I’m your downstairs neighbor, and I’m taking a test in five hours and I can’t sleep because you’re up here fucking a goat golem or something.”

“A goat…” He wasn’t doing that well at completing sentences since he had opened the door to be confronted by this lunatic. “My down stairs neighbor is Mrs. Faultham,” he corrected her, seizing on the one piece of information in this quasi-conversation he was sure about.

“Yeah, and she’s gone to Nepal for a year to contemplate her navel or something and I’m house-sitting for her. Or flat sitting. Or whatever you call it.” She talked with her hands even worse than he did. It was nice though, because the way she was swinging her arms about made her breasts sway enticingly under her shirt. He yanked himself back to attention as she pointedly cleared her throat. It wasn’t his fault he was distracted though. She had the body of Christina Hendricks under there, all curves and lush and… And he yanked himself back to attention again, snapping his head back upright from where it had listed to the side, swamped with admiring –  _nay, Hiddleston, admit it –_ lascivious thoughts. “Where’s the elephants?” she demanded.

His mouth opened and closed a few times as he tried to determine the easiest way to deal with the emotionally disturbed girl glaring at him as if she really thought he had secreted a herd of elephants somewhere. His bookshelves were large and filled to overflowing, but not even those were expansive enough to hide an entire herd of pachyderms. Besides, they were up flush against the walls. She was calling him a cretin but at least he knew that you wouldn’t be able to fit a single elephant, much less a group of them, back there.

“Aren’t you a bit young to be house-sitting by yourself?” Maybe he could call her parents. They must know what to do with her when she got like this.

Her lip curved in a perfect imitation of a camel’s disdainful sneer. “How old do you think I am?”

He looked her up and down, his mouth twisted to the side as he scrutinized her through narrowed eyes. He assumed the mien of a scientist dissecting a never-before-seen creature, trying to figure out what it was he had discovered. “Sixteen,” he finally pronounced.

She gagged, the tip of her tongue barely visible on her bottom lip. The action drew his attention to her mouth. She obviously hadn’t bothered taking her makeup off before she went to bed and her too full bottom lip was still stained raspberry. “Well that makes you staring at my boobs even creepier than it already was. I’m nineteen, and I still haven’t figure out where the elephants are. Or is it a crash of hippos tucked under your bed that’s the problem here?”

The smudged eyeliner made her scowl appear even more fierce than it otherwise would. “What is this bizarre fascination with animals about?” He still hadn’t deduced what the insane child – well, young woman, he corrected himself – was all in a tizzy about.

She stalked towards him until her chest almost brushed against his.  _Just a little closer…_  Her jaw jutted out defiantly as she looked up at him. “How were you making that ungodly noise? Were you opening an Abyssal plane or something? Were demons involved?”

He couldn’t figure out what in the world she was talking about. “I was simply trying to make pancakes.”

“Pancakes,” she said in disbelief. She put her hands on her hips, drawing his attention to her dark purple shorts. She had full hips and tan curvy legs. He had an unquenchable longing to be a sports car and drive the highway of her body and hug every curve and turn. She looked so soft and, except for the scowl on her face, inviting.  _Come on, Hiddleston, she’s 19 and pissed and quite probably insane. Her rack is the least of your worries._ “Pancakes don’t sound like that.”

He felt guilty as her eyes narrowed at him. Up close he could tell they were an odd bluish-green mélange that reminded him of Ben’s. “I um, I dropped all the pans on the floor when I tried to get out the one I needed.”

“Are you high?” Again her head moved with her irritation, her hair swaying around her face except for the ones standing out from her head on a static charge.

He stepped back. “Wh…  _No_. I am not high.”

“Why are you making pancakes at three in the morning?” She sniffed his shirt and then squinted up at him, peering closely at his eyes.

He stepped back again and rubbed at his throat.  _Come on, man. Stop ceding ground to this girl. Cry for King Henry and George and all that._  “I’m jet-lagged. Normally I’m quite good about sleeping on a plane, but I took some medicine for my cold and it has me all wired.”

“So you  _are_  high.” Her pointed chin bobbed in emphasis.

His eyes opened wide in realization and he laughed uproariously, his head falling back in appreciation of the circumstance. “A bit, I guess, yes.”

She didn’t find it nearly as amusing as he did. “Well that explains some of it. What was with the honking sounds?”

His fingers stroked up and down his neck as he stared at the ceiling, trying to figure out what she was going on about. “Oh. I was singing and my ears are still clogged from the flight and my sinuses are all congested. I must have been really loud and horrible and off-key.”

She looked at him askance. “A bit, yeah.” She sighed and her shoulders sagged. “Just eat some toast and don’t sing. I really don’t want to flunk this course, okay?” She rocked back and forth on her feet, tugging at the hem of her shirt as if she was nervous now that the anger was draining from her.

“I’m so sorry for disturbing you. And I’ll be quiet. I remember what revising for exams was like.” She waved a hand in dismissal as she headed for the door. “And welcome to the building.”

She yawned widely and her chest rose and fell with the motion. “Thanks,” she said, her calmer voice a soothing alto. It was actually quite lovely when she wasn’t using it to accuse him of vile sins and exotic animal smuggling.

“I’m Tom; I’m so sorry I didn’t introduce myself earlier.”

“I’m Moira. Good night.”

“Good morning,” he replied cheerily as she started to shut the door behind herself. She stopped long enough to flip him off and then shut the door completely.


	2. Chapter 2

_Three days later_

Tom jogged down the flights of stairs for his five am run. He was finally over the nagging head cold that had kept him from running the last few days and he was itching to get out and start devouring the ground again. His runs always provided him with a clarity that he could acquire in no other way, and three days without running had left him crabby and cantankerous. He pushed open the glass doors to his building and stepped out onto the pavement where he was confronted with another person getting ready to head out for a run. She was bent over from the waist, her arms twining about her legs as she stretched out her hamstrings. He stopped to admire her bum under the pretext of stretching out his own legs, though he had done that upstairs. He pulled his foot up behind him, leaning a hand against the wall as he gazed at her rear. It was curvy and sumptuous, like one of those vintage couches that always seemed to be all velvet upholstery and gilt covered frame. He lost himself admiring the way the black track pants clung to her and didn’t notice that the woman was standing up until he got caught staring at Moira’s body parts. Again. He awkwardly put his foot down.

“Good morning, Moira. I didn’t fancy you for a runner.”

She looked even less impressed with him this morning than she had the other night. “Why, because I have a bit of jiggle when I wiggle?”

“No.” His tongue darted out to moisten his lips as he scratched at his chest. There was no way to gracefully recover from that so he decided to change the topic. “How did your exam go?”

She folded her arms under her bosom. He had never realized women did that before. Maybe it was just because of her breasts. Folding her arms across them would probably be really awkward. If she tried to fold her arms over them she’d punch herself in the chin. She had to be wearing a sports bra, but even still, she was bountifully endowed. “It went okay.”

“Well, that’s good.” He smiled broadly, relieved to have gotten back on a positive footing.

Her eyebrows came together in a scowl. They were so dark that there was he was almost positive that she wasn’t a natural blonde.  “No,  _good_ is good. Okay is okay.”

His smile faded and he rubbed nervously at his throat. “Ah, well I apologize for any effect my appalling manners might have had upon your academic performance.”

Her head tilted to the side, and she paused to tuck her hair behind her ear. “Do you always talk like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like a thesaurus has taken up residence in your rectum?”

That was it. If she wasn’t going to accept his heartfelt apology, then so be it. He stepped forward, closing the distance between them and assumed his best power stance, legs spread wide and his hands on his hips. It was like being Henry V again. “Well, pardon me, Miss Sassypants for using the language of Shakespeare to do something other than accuse people of sexually victimizing innocent barnyard animals.”

She snorted. “The language of Shakespeare, my fat ass.”

He deliberately let his eyes drop down to admire her body. “Well, I was going to call it voluptuous or Rubenesque or luscious,” he murmured, making her lean into him to listen to the sensuality of the words, but then he snapped his eyes back up to her face, “but far be it from me to be so rude as to disagree with a lady.”

Color flamed in her cheeks as her jaw dropped. Her eyes narrowed and he could see her hands clenching into fists at her sides. “You don’t let your fear of being perceived rude to keep you from ogling me every time I’m within eye shot.”

“But it’s such an inviting view.” He smiled at her, the anger illuminating her face and making her body practically vibrate as she restrained the urge to slap him. Or worse. “It draws the eye like a work of art.”

“Yes, well I’m pretty sure if you were looking at an actual Rubens like you were looking at my boobs the other night, a museum guard would come right over and smack you upside the back of your head.”

“Smack you upside the back of your head.” He mimicked her perfectly. He was fairly certain at this point that she was from Oregon or Washington. “Such lovely American vernacular.”

“Well, I could be like every poncy twit I’ve met over here that thinks that the only language that should drip like honey from the tongue is the Bard’s own and tell you that ‘thou art as loathsome as a toad,’ that ‘I find that thou art a flesh-monger, a fool, and a coward.’ I could even go so far as to call you a ‘starvelling, you eel-skin, you dried neat’s-tongue, you bull’s-pizzle, you stock-fish–O for breath to utter what is like thee!-you tailor’s-yard, you sheath, you bow-case, you vile standing tuck!’ But after a while anyone with half a functioning brain realizes that Shakespeare would have benefited greatly from an editor and a lot less booze. So I will just say ‘Away you three inch fool’, and ‘I do desire we should be better strangers.’ I’ll run in this direction,” she pointed to her left, “and you run in that one.” She pointed to her right, jammed her ear buds into her ears, and slapped the iPod she had tucked into an armband.

Tom watched her jog off, his jaw agape. She had just insulted him. She had insulted him in Shakespeare. Not just in Shakespeare, but in at least five different plays of Shakespeare. Where did the mouthy little vermin get the gall to insult  _him_  in Shakespeare? It was spiritedly performed, as well, with an energetic vivacity that was unexpected at five in the morning. And she insulted Shakespeare! He didn’t care how beautiful your lips looked as they dripped vinegar instead of honey; you don’t get to insult Shakespeare in front of him and escape without a rebuke. Except, apparently, if you were her.

He plugged in his ear buds and started running. He kept thinking about Moira, though. He couldn’t understand what he had done that justified such irritation on her part. She treated him with all the deference one would give a pestilent boil. He knew he had been loud and disturbed her sleep, but one night shouldn’t make that much of a difference. Usually when he was loud and disturbing women’s sleep, they thanked him for it. He chuckled to himself as he ran. Maybe he should ask her out on a date. Put on the charm. That would sort things. It’s not like he didn’t know how to – what was it that Luke kept telling him? Stop eye-fucking the fan girls? – exactly, eye-fuck any straight female into a frenzied state of pre-orgasmic bliss. A realization dawned on him just like the sun coming up over the horizon. Maybe that was why she was angry. He hadn’t flirted with her. Maybe it was because she thought he only liked skinny girls. But he liked her body. No. Liked was the wrong word. He revered her body. It was beautiful. He wanted to grab hold of those lush hips and just –  _okay stop it Hiddleston, you’re wearing running shorts and if you pop a boner it’s going to be very noticeable_. He kept himself distracted the rest of his run through the park by reciting Shakespeare’s monologues and as he jogged back up the pavement to his building, Moira was nowhere in sight. He waited a few minutes under the guise of stretching to cool down, but she didn’t appear.

Images of her scowling face danced attendance and he kept hearing her voice burning his ears as he went about his morning routine. He found himself unable to concentrate on the script he was reading and finally picked up his mobile to text Zach.

_I met a girl. She insulted me. With Shakespeare._

**Knife through the heart, man. With a little twist for style. A lime twist probably. Maybe blood orange.**

_I can’t stop thinking about her but she’s completely wrong for me. She insulted Shakespeare too._

**Well, if she insults Shakespeare, game on. Take her to the dirt.**

_She’s just a kid._

**I think you’re scared.**

_Of a mouthy kid?_

**Of the hot girl that knows Shakespeare better than you.**

_I didn’t say she was hot. And she does not know Shakespeare better than me_.

**If she’s gotten this into your head by insulting you, she’s hot. And I think she does know Shakespeare better than you. And I think you’ve lost your game. You’re used to girls throwing themselves. You haven’t had to actually work for it in a while.**

_You’re challenging my game? First she calls me a toad and now you’re saying I can’t get a girl to like me if I set my mind to it? When did it turn into International Insult Tom Day?_

**I’m just saying, without the costumes and the script, maybe you don’t have as much going on as you think you do.**

Tom rolled his eyes. Zach was not going to let this one drop and he could sense another one of their infamous wagers in the offing.  _Fine. What do I have to do?_

**Get her to kiss you. Not you planting one on her out of the blue. She has to kiss you.**

Tom was practically insulted. This was not nearly as epic as their challenges normally were.  _That’s it? That’s almost nothing at all._

**In the next two weeks.**

_Easy._

**If you don’t I will personally punch you in the dick.**

Tom laughed as he read the last text. That was Zach’s classic threat. Some day he was going fail one of their bets and get punched in the dick but he was positive it wasn’t going to be this one. Two weeks to get a girl to kiss him? This was going to be like taking candy from a baby.


	3. Chapter 3

That evening, Tom descended the stairs two at a time to the floor below his to put his plan into action. He knocked on Moira’s door and shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans as he rocked forward and back on his feet as he waited for her to answer. When she opened the door, wearing a black vest and jeans and with her finger tucked into her place in a hardback book, he was not reassured to watch her full lips firm into a tight line as she saw who was standing on her doorstep.

“You’re on the wrong floor. You live up another flight.”

He smiled his most charming smile, making sure to stay focused on her face. That vest may be showing a bit of delectable cleavage, and her jeans highlighted the scrumptious curve of her hips, but he would  _not_  be distracted. “I wanted to apologize to you, Moira. We got off on the wrong foot and it seems that everything I do irritates you even further and I don’t want to be on bad terms with such a lovely neighbor.”

Her nails tapped against the door where she still gripped it. “Just the ugly neighbors. No need to be nice to them.”

Every muscle in his torso tightened as he fought back the urge to just surrender and punch himself in the dick and get it over worth. Surely it would be less painful than trying to convince this shrew to kiss him, no matter how alluring he found her. “Why are you determined to interpret everything I say in the worst possible way?”

She sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose as she squeezed her eyes shut. “So far you haven’t given me any reason to think you deserve the benefit of the doubt.” She opened her eyes and glared at him as her hand fell to her hip. “You ogle me like you’re picking out which lobster you plan on having for dinner, as if all you have to do is snap your fingers and I’ll fall into your bed or onto my knees depending on what you’re in the mood for. You breathe arrogance in your every interaction. You sing at the top of your lungs in the middle of the night and even though you sound better now that you’re not so stuffed up, some of us don’t have the luxury of sleeping whenever we want and have to get up and go to school and work. So it’s so lovely for you that you have absolutely no responsibilities so you can ‘stay up all night to get lucky,’ but it really makes me want to punch you in your smug supercilious face.”

His jaw clenched as he fought back the urge to return her tirade in kind. If he was arrogant, she was judgmental, and… His mind groped helplessly to find something else to criticize about her.  Feeling defensive, he crossed his arms across his chest.  “I have responsibilities.”

She cocked her head and shook it. “Five am runs don’t count as responsibilities.”

“Listen, I know my life may look glamorous, but there is a lot of hard work and dedication and craft in what I do.”

“What exactly is it that you do? Besides leering at women and trying to reenact  _Stomp_  in the middle of the night?”

He backed up a half step. “You mean you don’t know who I am?”

She ran a hand through her hair and it fell forward over one eye. Her laughter was the sound of every actor’s nightmare. She found him beneath contempt; she found him ridiculous. “Could you possibly be any more egotistical? If you tried really,  _really_  hard do you think you could actually incorporate one more iota of arrogance into your existence? Why should I know who you are?”

He rubbed at his neck as he wet his lips. He could feel the tips of his ears turning red. “I’m sort of famous. But of course, there’s no reason you should.”

Moira sighed and ran a hand through her hair again, tucking it behind her ear. “I’m going to level with you, alright? I know this building is filled with little old ladies who lunch and have more money than Midas because they were hiding Viking gold under their bed during the Blitz or something. So I get that this is a ‘posh flat’ as you would call it, and you get to go be famous and have a wonderful life and probably bathe in imported yak’s milk or whatever it is that famous people do, but I’m just a college student. I’m here because my grandmother and Mrs. Faultham became best friends when they were nurses in World War II together.  My only goal is to get the best grades I can so I can get into the graduate program I want. I’m not trying to be a bother to you, and I don’t want you to think I hate you so you feel compelled out of some narcissistic perfectionism to make sure that I, like apparently the rest of the world, worships you. So I’m going to accept your apology and go back to studying now if that’s alright with you.”

Tom took a deep breath and blew it out slowly, his cheeks puffing. “Yes.” He scratched at his goatee as he scrambled over how to fix the mess he’d created for himself. He hadn’t lost any of his bets with Zach before and he wasn’t planning on losing this one. His mind was blank at the moment so he opted for a strategic retreat: politely apologize again and come back another day. “I am profusely sorry for any disruption I’ve caused in your studies and for interrupting your reading. I know there are few worse social faux pas that can be committed than disturbing someone while they are enjoying a good book.”

One of her dark eyebrows arched. “ _You_  read?”

He chuckled. “Didn’t you see the bookshelves when you burst into my flat the other night?”

“I thought they were mostly aesthetic. You know, filled by a decorator to give you the air of someone erudite and thoughtful instead of…” she gestured at him with her free hand, encompassing his faded blue tee and dark jeans, “this.”

“What are you reading?” He pointed with his chin at the book in her hand.

She held up her copy of  _The Secret Garden._

He shook his head. “I’ve never read it.”

She shrugged. “I’m not surprised. Most men haven’t. That whole ‘boys won’t read books with a girl main character’ thing. They miss out. It’s a wonderful book and I always loved Dickon best anyway.”

He leaned against her door frame. If she was a reader, finding the way to her mouth was going to be much easier. He knew how to make reader girls vulnerable to his charms. “Finding time for an old favorite amidst all the studying?” He smiled, letting his smile grow as she responded to his question.

She shook her head. “No time for fun reading right now. I’m reading it for class this time. It’s a course on children’s literature.”

“What are you reading?”

Her brows pinched together in confusion and she started to hold up the book again and then stopped when she understood what he was asking. “That still throws me every time.” A faint blush came to her cheeks as she glanced down at her book. “I’m reading English Literature.”

He chuckled. This was getting easier and easier. “Well, if you ever need to borrow a book for any of the non-children’s lit courses in your program, I probably have everything you might need on my bookshelves.”

“You sound very sure of yourself.”

“No, just sure of my bookshelves.” He smiled. “Good night, Moira. I’ll let you get back to your studies.”

“Good night, Tom.” Her door buzzer sounded and she jumped. “That’s my friend Bee. She’s in the same program with me; we’re getting together to study.” She pushed the button to let Bee into the building.

“Enjoy your evening.” He turned and headed for the central staircase and was crashed into by a ball of brunette energy who barreled onto the landing. She dropped her bag and they both bent to pick up the purse they smacked heads. The woman slipped and fell to her knees. Tom started apologizing profusely and took her hand to help her regain her feet. “Are you hurt?”

She held her hand to her forehead as she looked up at him. “No, I’m…being touched by Tom Hiddleston. On second thought, I believe I must have a concussion.”

Moira had seen their collision and had come running down the hallway. “You’re fine, Bee.”

“No. I think that’s Tom Hiddleston.” She pointed at Tom. “Something is obviously wrong with my brain.”

Moira looked at Tom who was worriedly peering at the faint mark on Bee’s forehead. “No, I’m sorry, darling.” He stooped over so he could look her in the eyes. They were a stunning liquid brown that got darker as they got closer to the pupil so the cognac edges faded seamlessly into the back. It was like she had two autumn pools for eyes, just a few shades darker than her skin, and highlighted to perfection by the long dark hair that fell across her face. He brushed the hair back and away from her face, revealing the whole of her picturesquely full mouth that had the shimmer of a glittered rose. “I actually am Tom Hiddleston.”

Bee squeaked and her hands flew to her mouth. Her cheeks took on a ruddy tone as Moira grabbed Bee’s purse from off the floor. “Come on, Bee. It’s time to go study.” She tugged Bee’s arm and pulled her down the hallway, though Bee turned to stare at him as she was forcibly dragged away. Tom found her enchanting even in her dumbfounded state. Tom laughed after the door slammed shut. He had a feeling Moira would soon know who he was.

About half an hour later there was a knock on the door. He was unsurprised to find Moira standing there when he opened it.

“Hello, again.”

Moira’s earlier smile while talking about books was nowhere in evidence as she scowled at him. “Bee is refusing to study until I watch  _Thor._ Apparently it is a Shakespearean epic on the scale of King Lear crossed with Norse Mythology and will also ‘give me all the feels.’”

Tom stifled a laugh at the evident irritation on her face. “Come on in. I think I have a spare screener somewhere in my office.” He left her to go dig up a copy and when he returned he found her browsing his bookshelves. He quietly came up behind her. “Find anything interesting?”

She continued to look at the shelves, her finger running along the row of spines. She straightened the shelves as she went, lining the volumes up so they were all the same distance from the edge of the glossy amber-stained wood. “Well, your interior decorator has good taste. A little heavy on the really old stuff, but all in all this is a respectable home library.”

“I read Classics when I was in university.”

“Great.” She blew her hair out of her face. “You can comment on my fat ass in Latin and Greek.”

“I wouldn’t because you don’t have a fat ass. You have a beautiful ass, if I may be so bold, and I’ve rather liked looking at it,” she whirled around so she was facing him, backing up against the bookshelf, “though I apologize for making you uncomfortable and won’t do so in the future without your permission.” He smiled and handed her two DVDs. “That’s  _Thor_  and  _The Hollow Crown._ Since you seemed to be quite familiar with Shakespeare this morning, I thought you might like to see my go at it if you have any leisure time in your busy schedule.”

Moira looked down at the DVDs and then back up at him, her eyes wider than they were before. “You played Henry V?” He thought her skin might be a shade or two paler than it was a moment earlier as well.

“Yes.” He smiled again, aiming more for adorable puppy than smoldering sex god. That would come later. “I’m no Branagh or Olivier, but I did give it the old college try.”

Moira sucked her lips in between her teeth and slowly let them roll back out. “Right.” He watched as the color came back into her lips and her eyes skipped across his face, appearing to actually see him for the first time. He waited patiently as she surveyed him, her eyes lingering briefly on his lips before they fell to the DVDs in her hands again. “Well, thank you for these. I should get back before Bee starts rearranging the furniture to improve the  _feng shui_  or something ridiculous like that.”

“You don’t seem to like your friend much.”

She looked back up at him. “Oh, I love Bee like a sister. It’s just that she thinks the boys will like her more if she acts like a ditz. She keeps me from being too much of a hateful wench, and I keep her from going home with every boy she bumps into. She’s a bit of a klutz and you’re not the first person she’s bonked heads with. In fact, that’s how we met – she collided with me coming out of a lecture hall.”

He carefully tucked a strand of her hair back behind her ear, and while he could see her stiffen from the unexpected contact, she didn’t move away. “Are you as tough on yourself as you are on everyone else?” A scoop of puppy-dog innocence to offset earlier arrogance, now a dash of gentle compassion. He might be solidly average in the kitchen, but when it came time to cook up some sexual tension, he was a three-Michelin-star chef.

Her smile was diamond bright but her eyes possessed only the hardness of that stone and none of its sparkle. “Even tougher.” She scooted out from between him and the bookshelf and headed for the door. He took a second to admire her rear before he followed her, hurrying to open the door for her.

“Feel free to keep those. I have extra copies.”

She rubbed her palm against her jeans. “Thank you. I may have to give them to Bee, though, since you have touched them with your own hands.”

Tom laughed. “Wait a minute.” He jogged back into his office and came out a minute later. “Her own set. Autographed and everything. And a picture.”

Moira looked down at the headshot. ‘Bea, it was great running into you. Tom Hiddleston xoxo’.  She looked back up at him and made a gagging face. “Yeah, I’ll do my best to convince her you aren’t actually offering hugs and kisses, but if she shows up to cash this in, it’s your own fault. And I’m half tempted to leave it to make you look bad, but I don’t want Bee to be hurt. You spelled her name wrong.”

“Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry.” He got another picture from his office and came back out with it and a black Sharpie. “How does she spell it?”

“Like a honeybee.”

She waited while he signed a new picture for her friend. He handed it to her and then grinned. “Do you want me to sign yours?” He brandished the Sharpie at her.

She rolled her eyes before she shook her head. “No, I think I’ll survive.”

He shut the door behind her and started laughing as he stretched. His earlier worry that he had gotten himself into an unworkable situation was gone thanks to the beautiful Bee’s unwitting assistance. He stretched out on his leather sofa, resting his feet on the arm, and set to work planning his next move.


	4. Chapter Four

It is a truth universally acknowledged that all libraries smell the same. Tom took a deep breath of one of his favorite scents as he followed the bread crumbs of call numbers further back into the stacks at his local library. He paused when he got to the section he was seeking and started to run his fingers along the spines, looking for the number he had scrawled on the scrap of paper in his hand. His hand paused as he passed the number he was looking for without finding the book. He double-checked the number on the paper to make sure he wasn’t misremembering it. Despite the insistence of the electronic catalog that it was on the shelf, it didn’t seem to be there. He skimmed the shelf again, and then the one above and the one below it with no success. He was about to give up when at the other end of the long aisle he saw a circulation cart being pushed into view.

He headed towards the cart, hoping that the librarian would be able to help him find the book when he stopped and ducked into the walkway between the rows of shelves. It was Moira. What was she doing working at a library? He breathed into his cupped hand, smoothed down his shirt, took a deep breath and stepped back into the space he had previously abandoned and strolled towards her, a pleasant smile on his face.  _Okay, Hiddleston, be nice, ask her what she thought of_ Thor _, have her help you find the book. She’ll like that you’re confused. It will make her see that you’re not the arrogant twat she thinks you are._

He stopped by the cart and waited for her to stand back up from where she was putting books on the bottom shelf. When she saw him she scowled. “What are you doing here?”

He arched an eyebrow at her. He knew how devastating his eyebrow was. “Hello to you too, Moira.”

She rolled her eyes before she smiled, bright and plastic, at him. “Hello, Tom.” She went back to her normal disdainful expression. “Why are you here?”

“Well, I was in search of a book.” He smiled charmingly and leaned towards her conspiratorially. “I heard you might have them here.”

She pulled a book off the shelf without looking and smacked it against his chest. “Have a book.”

He oofed as the heavy tome hit his torso. He grabbed it as she let go and looked at the spine.  _How Green Were the Nazis?: Nature, Environment, and Nation in the Third Reich._ He looked up at her with another smile. “While this sounds like fascinating reading material, I was actually in search of a particular book.”

She sighed, blowing the hair out of her face. “What are you looking for?”

He was going to have to get Zach to teach him how to do the smoulder because apparently his wasn’t working anymore. He handed her the scrap of paper and she looked at the call number. “Well, that should be down this way.” She started walking the direction he had come from, leaving the circulation cart behind. He happily walked behind her; she had a whole sexy librarian vibe going with a tight black pencil skirt and a white blouse with tiny sleeves and sheer black tights. She was even wearing glasses. The only thing missing was high heels, though he guessed that flats made more sense if you were going to be on your feet all day. She had a seductive walk even in flats, with a nice side-to-side motion to her hips that set him to thinking about other ways he would like to get her hips to move. He pulled himself back to attention. “I did check the shelf and I couldn’t find it. The computer said it should be here, though.”

She stopped where he had been and scanned the shelf, and then the one above and below it. “Well, you’re right; it doesn’t seem to be here.” She turned back to him. “I can mark it as lost and if we find it, someone will give you a call.”

He shook his head and rubbed the back of his neck. He had really wanted to read that book. “No, that’s alright. I don’t want to be a bother.”

“Why are you looking for a book on King Arthur legends anyway? Doing a bit of light reading?”

He needed to remember to talk about books with her. She seemed endlessly fascinated by them. “Research for a project.”

One of her eyebrows rose. She was almost as good at that as he was. “You’re going to be King Arthur?”

“Well, I’m actually not allowed to say.” He ducked his chin as he smiled.

She stepped closer and whispered. “Can you blink?”

He looked around to make sure no one else was close by, taking a second to peer through the shelves to the aisles on either side. “If you swear to keep it secret, even from Bee, I’ll tell you.”

“I swear.” She drew a cross over her heart with her finger.

He grinned and whispered, “The Beeb is going to do a twelve hour miniseries on Arthur, and I’ve signed on to play him.”

Moira slapped her hand over her mouth to stifle her squeal as she bounced on her toes. “I  _love_  the Arthur legends. I’ve loved them ever since I was little.”

“It won’t ruin them for you having me be the titular character?”

“Nah, you’re not bad at acting. You made me feel bad for Loki even though he was a total dick to Thor.” Her eyes widened and her mouth opened into an O as she inhaled a sudden breath. She leaned closer to him and whispered, “Do you think you could get Thor to be Lancelot? Because he is haaaaawt. Like, I could bounce a quarter off of his ass. Or abs. Or chest. Pretty much his entire body looks bounceable.”

Tom’s fingers splayed across his face as he laughed. “I’ll make sure to tell Chris that the next time I talk to him.” Was that the reason she didn’t fancy him? He wasn’t big enough? He was plenty big where it mattered.

“Do you keep in touch with him?”

“Yes. Chris is like a brother to me. I could introduce you to him next time he’s in London. Him and  _his wife._ ”

“Does he still have the…” she held her hands up by her shoulders, trying to indicate giant muscles.

He laughed again and shook his head. “No. That build is a lot of work to keep up.”

“Oh,” she frowned. “Then never mind. I just wanted to touch his bicep and see if it was real.”

“It was all real. He spent almost as much time in the gym as he did on set.” He ran his hand through his hair and eyed her speculatively. “The London premiere of the sequel is in a few weeks. I can get you a ticket if you want. You have to promise not to pelt Chris with spare change, though.”

Her eyes lit up and then her mouth twisted. “Can I have two? Because Bee would kill me dead if I went to something like this without her.”

He nodded. “I’ll talk to Luke and see what I can do.”

“Who is Luke?”

“He’s my publicist. He basically runs my life.”

“Well, tell Luke thank you for me.” She smiled, a gentle curve of her lips that hit him like a blacksmith on an anvil. He had never seen that particular expression on her face before. “And for Bee. And I promise not to let her touch anyone.” She looked to the shelf and back to him. “Did you need anything else?”

“No. I’m just going to browse for a bit. See if any of these other books have information that could be helpful.”

She tucked her hair behind her ear. “Alright. I’ll go back to shelving then.” She turned and walked back to the aisle. Tom watched her go and then shook his head and went back to perusing the shelves in front of him. The London premiere was within the two week window, and Zach would even be there for it. Overwhelm her with some glitz and glitter. Of course, he’d have to keep her away from Chris. He’d have to keep Bee away from Chris. And Zach. Of course, knowing Zach, he’d have to keep him away from Bee. He pulled another book from the shelf and started flipping through it, pausing to read a section. He got lost in the words and when he looked up, she was gone.

He decided to check out the book he was holding and two others and headed to the circulation desk. He passed the Children’s section and smiled as he got an idea. A few minutes later he got to the front of the queue to check out his books. He couldn’t believe his luck that Moira was the one checking him out. He put his books down with his library card on top.

Moira picked up the card and saw  _The Secret Garden_ sitting underneath it. “Oh, I love this book,” she said and then looked up at her patron. She smiled – Tom internally fist pumped, she actually smiled – reluctantly – doesn’t matter, still a smile, second one of the day; he fist pumped again – and shook her head. “Are you checking it out for your daughter?” she asked with a saccharine sweetness as she swiped his card.

“No. This really smart woman I know recommended it to me. She said it was one of her favorites and I wanted to see what appealed to such a remarkable person.”

Her mouth fell open the tiniest bit as she blinked at his unexpected response. “Well,” she stuttered for a second, “I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. I don’t think its magic has an age limit.”

“I don’t think most types of magic have an age limit.” He took his card back from her, making sure to let his fingers linger over hers.

She picked up the scanner gun and turned her attention to the bar code on the cover of the book. “I don’t know. I think some magics have an age limit. I mean, that whole Edward in  _Twilight_ thing is pretty messed up. He’s  _old_  and is practically stalking a teenage girl. That’s creepy.”

Tom chuckled. “You’re right. But then there’s probably an age range. Thirteen years age difference, _for example_ , is an entirely different kettle of fish than one hundred years.”

“Maybe when you’re old. Right now, it’s like me with a six year old, or you with a teenager. I think we can all agree that neither of those are scenarios that would be beneficial for society.” She shuddered dramatically as she finished checking out his books and printed out a receipt. She tucked the yellow slip of paper inside the cover of the top book on the stack and said, “They’re due back in two weeks. Enjoy your reading!” She pushed the books across the desk towards him; her impersonal, plastic smile was firmly back in place.

***

Tom was reading when there was a knock on the door. He was surprised and gratified to find Moira standing on his doorstep. “Moira. It’s good to see you again so soon. Come in.”

He shut the door behind her and she held a book out to him. “I found it for you. Whoever had shelved it had transposed the second and third number.”

“Oh my goodness, thank you so much.” He took it from her. “That was so thoughtful of you.”

“I was just doing my job.”

“Well, this,” he gestured with the book, “is above and beyond the call of duty. You are an excellent librarian.”

She shook her head, though a faint blush of color tinted her cheeks. “I’m not really a librarian. I just work there.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Several more years of schooling? It’s what I want to do.”

“Well, you certainly look the part. The glasses are a nice touch.”

She scowled at him again and he silently cursed.  _Come back smile!_ “The glasses are because I forgot to get new contacts; they’re not a costume.”

“Well, I like them. They draw attention to your beautiful eyes.”

Her beautiful eyes narrowed. “Are you like this with everyone?”

“Like what?”

She flung her hand in his general direction, as if to indicate his entire existence. “A flirt. Because if it’s everyone, that’s fine, but if it’s me, I wish you would stop.”

He cocked his head to the side. “Why do you want me to stop?”

Her mouth firmed before she looked down at the ground. “Because it feels like a joke that I’m not in on.”

Her quietness made him realize he must have hit a nerve. “Why would you think it’s a joke? You’re beautiful and witty. Men must flirt with you all the time.”

“Not so much.” She was still staring at the floor, rubbing the top of one of her feet against the back of her other leg.

He tipped her chin up so she was looking at him again. “Well, then their blindness is their own punishment that they don’t get to spend more time with you.”

Her lips tightened into a thin line, a line that curved down the slightest degree at either side, before she moved her face away from his hand. “You are old and famous, and I am neither of those things. Maybe you should go flirt with someone who is at least one of them.”

“I’m not old.”

She pushed her hip out to the side and rested a hand on it. “Unless you were particularly late at hitting puberty, you probably could technically be my father in a scary white trash version of reality, not to mention that I’m sure Luke would love you dating a, let’s see if I can do this with proper British vernacular, a right stroppy cow,” she said precisely emphasizing each word with a bob of her hand, “not to mention the whole ‘I’m a teenager and you’re in your thirties’ thing which I’m sure will play lovely on the headlines of your atrocious tabloids over here.”

“You’ve thought about this a lot.” Tom smirked. “It sounds like you’re trying to talk yourself out of going to dinner with me, even though you really want to.”

She rubbed the heel of her hand against her forehead. “You’re a talented actor and you’re not painful to look at, but I don’t want to date you or kiss you or any of that stuff because it would never work.”

Tom chuckled deep in his chest. “I never said anything about kissing.” _You’re getting to her, Hiddleston. Outstanding!_

Moira’s hands balled into fists at her side and she stomped a foot as she let out a little scream of frustration.

He stepped closer to her and bent his head so he was speaking softly against her ear. “Do you think about kissing me?”

“Goodbye, Tom. The book’s due in two weeks.” She whirled around and proceeded to yank open his door. He grabbed her by the shoulder and she yanked away from him.

“Really, Moira, I know there’s an age difference, but we’re both adults. I don’t see why it’s so hard to believe that I might want to get to know you better.”

“Then get to know me better,” she said across clenched teeth, “but do it without all the flattery and fawning, because it makes me uncomfortable.”

He rocked back on his heels.  _Pushed too far there, man._ “Are you on Twitter or Facebook or anything like that?”

“I have a twitter that I use for following things, but I don’t ever tweet.”

He scratched at the patch of skin revealed by the open buttons on his shirt. “Well, I’m on twitter if you want to follow me, but why don’t I give you my number and that way you can text me when I’m being too loud.”

He got a pen and then grabbed her hand and turned it over and scrawled his number across her palm. “That way you won’t lose it.” He gently cradled her hand in his, letting his thumb rest against the pulse in her wrist.

“Flirt with me again and I’ll give this,” she held her hand up, “to Bee.”

“As you wish.”

Her eyes narrowed again, her dark brows hidden behind the frame of her glasses. “You, sir, are no Westley.” She turned around and stalked down the hallway. This time he let her go.


	5. Chapter 5

Tom hurried forward to grab the books slipping from Moira’s arm as she struggled with the front door to their building.

“Let me help you there,” he said as he held the door open for her, her books held against his chest.

“You’re a regular Prince Charming, aren’t you?” She picked up the cloth bags of groceries she had put down to root for her keys and limped through the open door.

Tom’s brows crumpled together in concern. “Are you hurt? What happened?”

“Promise not to laugh?”

He put down the books on the table in the lobby and picked her up before she realized what was happening. “Of course I won’t laugh.”

“What are you doing? Put me down!” She slapped ineffectually at the hand on her knee.

Tom shook his head with a grin. “Prince Charming does not let injured maidens walk up stairs by themselves.”

“I hate to break it to you, buddy, but I haven’t been a maiden for a few years. And you’re going to hurt yourself!”

“Nonsense.” He started up the stairs. “Carrying you is easy-peasy.”

One of her eyebrows arched even as she put her free arm around his shoulders. “Easy peasy? Prince Charming says easy-peasy?”

“Apparently. And I’m glad you agree that I’m Prince Charming.”

She stuck her tongue out at him. At this close distance, the urge to bite it was almost irresistible. Almost. “Never bruise the ego of the man carrying you. He’s likely to drop you on your bottom in a fit of pique.”

“Does Prince Charming get fits of pique? I don’t think he would.” He carried her up to her door. “Now where are your keys?”

She dangled them from her fingers, letting the metal clink together and giving him time to read her ‘Librarians Dewey It Better’ keychain before she reached down and unlocked the door. She twisted the handle and he pushed it with his foot before he carried her inside.

“Well, that was rather bridal,” she muttered.

“And you accuse me of flirting with you. You’re the one bringing up marriage.” He carried her to the sofa and put her down carefully. “Very well,” he put his hand over his heart, “I accept.” She stuck her tongue out again as he grabbed one of the pillows and placed it on the sofa. “Put your foot up on this.” Moira did as she was told and he took off her Mary Jane before he pulled the afghan off the back of the sofa and tucked it in around her.

“I’ll be right back. I’m going to retrieve the rest of your things from downstairs.” He was out the door before Moira could reply and back in a remarkably short time.

“Did you run or something?”

He chuckled as he shut the door behind him. “I didn’t want to give you a chance to lock me out.”

“You have my books. I might lock you out but I would never lock out my books.”

Tom looked at the stack of books in his hands. “You’ve checked out half the children’s section of the library.”

“Just about.  Except someone has checked out  _The Secret Garden_ and hasn’t returned it yet.”

He set the books down on the end table so they would be within her reach without her having to get up. “I only checked it out yesterday. You should give a fellow a little bit of time to read and savor it. Or are you one of those scary librarians that think that it is their duty to protect the books from the unwashed masses who won’t love them like you do?”

Her brows narrowed. He was getting used to that scowl. “You haven’t even opened it yet, have you?”

“I have. And I’m already in the secret garden.”

“What are the boys’ names?”

He crossed his arms across his chest. “Dickon and Colin.”

“And the gardener’s name?”

“Ben Weatherstaff.” He thought she looked vaguely impressed though she was attempting to hide it. Vaguely impressed was a step up for him when it came to her face.

“Huh. I guess you are reading it.”

He sat down on the edge of the sofa. “What happened to your ankle? And I promise not to laugh.”

She became fascinated with the pattern crocheted into the afghan. “I actually slipped on a banana peel,” she whispered.

Tom covered his mouth and coughed to cover the laugh. “Really?”

“Yes. I was in the grocery store and I guess a banana had been dropped and trodden under foot or something and I didn’t see it too late and ended up twisting my ankle.”

“That’s awful.”

“Well, the manager told me I didn’t have to pay for my groceries and had one of the nice ladies go and fetch the rest of the things I needed and then he called me a cab so I didn’t have to walk home.”

He leaned in and whispered, “Did you get anything extra?”

Moira grinned and looked down at her lap. “A nice bar of eating chocolate and a package of hobnobs.”

“Excellent choices.” He picked up the bags of food. “I’m going to go put these away before anything spoils.”

“You don’t have to do that.” She reached for the handles of the bags and grabbed his hand by mistake. Or at least, he assumed it was a mistake since she let go like he was a thistle.

“Nonsense. It won’t be more than a minute.” He quickly dispensed of the groceries, remembering what it was like to be a broke student as he put away the bags of rice and frozen veg. A good bar of chocolate probably was a splurge for her. Living in this building insulated him from the reality of a lot of peoples’ lives. He put the hobnobs on the counter. “Where’s your kettle?”

“In a cupboard somewhere,” she called back.

He frowned at this strange answer. “You don’t just leave it out on the counter?”

“Why would I?”

Tom debated what to say in response. How do you explain to someone why the door to a house is placed on the ground floor? That’s just where it  _belonged_. “You don’t drink tea very often?”

“I just use the microwave.”

Tom dropped the box of cereal he was putting away and barely managed to grab it before it hit the floor.  _It’s all right, Thomas. She’s an American. She doesn’t know any better. You’ll just make a proper cuppa and she’ll see the error of her ways._ He went through the cabinets until he found the kettle, filled it with water and plugged it in to heat. He opened the tin marked ‘Tea’ and sniffed.  _Old tea. That’s even worse than no tea._ He dumped the loose leaves in the bin and set the empty container back on the counter as he shook his head.

He headed back through the living room. “I’m going to run up to my flat and get some tea that’s younger than you. I’ll be right back.”

Her cheeks flushed. Was she embarrassed that he was helping her? “You don’t have to do this, Tom.”

“Nonsense. You can’t recuperate in England without tea.”

He was back shortly with a box of tea bags of different varieties. He couldn’t bring himself to leave her without any tea in the house at all.That would be the height of barbarism. It would almost be American. He quickly had everything squared away and made an improvised ice pack out of a plastic bag and a tray of ice wrapped in a tea towel. He brought it out to Moira and placed it carefully on her ankle. She put down the book she was reading. He smiled as he saw that it was  _The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe._ That book he would be much more capable of discussing in depth than  _The Secret Garden_.

“It doesn’t seem to be bruising which is good.”

“Still hurts like a bastard though.”

He pulled a prescription bottle out of his pocket. “If I give you one of these, will you not tattle on me?” He shook the bottle, letting the pills rattle like a maraca.

“What are they?”

“Tramadol. My doctor prescribed them for me when I got injured filming and I never threw out the extras.”

She made a gimme motion with her hand and he chuckled. “Let me get you a glass of water.”

He went back in the kitchen and fetched a drink for her and gave her one of the tablets. He set the bottle next to her books and went back into the kitchen to finish making tea. He came out several minutes later, having made tea for both of them and put some hobnobs on a plate.  He set the tray down on the coffee table and handed her a cup of tea after putting two biscuits on the saucer.

She took a sip of her tea and her eyebrows rose. “This is really good.” She took another swallow.

Tom nodded. “When you feel up to walking around, I’ll teach you how to make a proper cuppa.” He gestured to the book on her lap with his hobnob. “I’m assuming you’ve read that before.”

“I had four parakeets when I was younger, Lucy, Susan, Edmund, and Peter.”

He smiled. “I loved those books when I was a child.”

“’Always winter but never Christmas’ is the saddest phrase I have ever read.” She shivered and took another sip of her tea.

“I thought you would have your own copy.”

“I do.” She laughed. “Of course I do. But books are heavy and expensive to ship across an ocean so my library is at home. So I’m abusing my employee privileges at the library to make sure they order everything I want to read that they don’t already have in their holdings.” She held her finger up to her lips and made a shushing motion at him.

“Is this for your class then?”

She nodded. “For a paper I’m writing on depictions of the divine in children’s literature.” She nibbled on her hobnob.

“That explains why you’ve got  _The Wind in the Willows_  in that stack.”

“That encounter with Pan is so beautiful. The language is brilliant, and there’s such a sense of melancholy to it that you can’t help but be absorbed in.”

He reached over her and plucked the book of the table. Setting down his tea, he opened to the middle of the illustrated volume and found the chapter where Rat and Mole find the god Pan and started to read it aloud. Talking to her about books, checking out  _The Secret Garden_ , it had all started out as another step to get her to kiss him, but the more he talked to her, the more he genuinely liked her. It was moving beyond the purely physical appreciation of her form. The little moments where she let herself show through were all perfection. She had impeccable taste in books from what he had seen and a wicked sense of humor. As he glanced at her over the top of the book, he stumbled over the words at the way she looked. She had rested her head on the back of the sofa and her eyes were closed but she was smiling. Maybe smile was too strong of a word. She looked like she was remembering something beautiful and distant. He returned to the book, calling on all his talent in reading the story to her, of Rat and Mole and the dream music and Pan, and the awe and fear, and then the forgetting and returning to their mundane lives.

He read the final words of the chapter, “With a smile of much happiness on his face, and something of a listening look still lingering there, the weary Rat was fast asleep,” and closed the book. Her eyes didn’t open and he realized that, just like Rat, at some point she had fallen asleep. He smiled. Tramadol on an empty stomach would do that. When she wasn’t scowling at him she was lovely and in sleep she bore an air of peace of vulnerability that was completely foreign to her personality when awake. He set the book on the coffee table and then scooted Moira’s sleeping form down so she was stretched out on the sofa. He took the pillow from under her foot and put it under her head and then pulled the afghan up over her shoulders. He carried the ice pack into the kitchen and emptied it in the sink, put the extra biscuits away so they wouldn’t go stale and then wrote a note telling her to call him if she needed anything and left it on the coffee table where she would see it when she woke.

He looked at her for a long moment, his Prince Charming to her Sleeping Beauty, and then bent and kissed her softly on her forehead. He turned off the light and left her slumbering, quietly shutting the door as he went.


	6. Chapter Six

Bee answered the knock at Moira’s door since Moira was currently digging through her bedroom for the notes from last week’s lecture that Bee had missed. Her eyes widened upon seeing Zachary Levi standing on the welcome mat.

“Wow. Tom said you were pretty, but you truly are a beautiful woman.”

Bee still stood wide-eyed. She stared at Zach’s smiling face for a few more seconds before she forced herself to blink. She shook her head and then she squinted at him. “Tom Hiddleston said I was pretty? Wait. Tom Hiddleston told _you_  about  _me_?”

Zach leaned against the doorframe and grinned. “Yes. He’s a bit twitterpated with the girl who burst into his flat in the middle of the night and accused him of molesting geese.”

The smile faded a bit from Bee’s face. “Oh. You’re talking about Moira, not me.”

“Did I knock on the wrong door?” He looked around for a number.

“No, this is Moira’s. I’m her friend Bee.”

“Well, Bee, it’s a pleasure to meet  _you_.” He picked up Bee’s hand and pressed a kiss against the back of it as he looked up into her eyes.

Bee giggled weakly and then said, “Just a minute.” Forgetting to invite him in, she left the door standing open as she ran down the hallway. “Moira, Zachary Levi is at your door and he just kissed my hand.”

Moira surfaced from her book bag. “Am I supposed to know who that is?”

“Chuck! Flynn Ryder! He plays Fandral in the new Thor movie.”

“Oh.” She flipped through her note book and tore out a few pages before throwing the notebook on the quilt. “He must be one of Tom’s friends.”

“Yes, he’s one of Tom’s friends. Why is he  _here_?” Bee jabbed her finger at the floor.

“Where is he?”

Bee’s eyes widened comically. “Oh, I didn’t let him in!” Bee went tearing back down the hall with Moira following behind her at a more sedate pace. She grabbed the handle of the door and swung around so she was facing him. “Sorry about that.”

Zach’s grin was bigger than before and Bee blushed, knowing he had heard the exchange between her and Moira. “Not a problem. Always nice to meet a fan.”

Moira came into view. “Hi. Can I help you?”

Zach looked her quickly up and down. “Ah yes, I see why Tom is smitten with you. We were ordering in dinner and got way too much. Do you two want to come up and have dinner with us?”

“Thank you for the offer, but we have plans.”

Bee looked at Moira, her eyes widening in horror as she realized Moira was turning down dinner with two of the most gorgeous men she had ever seen. She turned back to Zach. “Can you excuse us one moment?” She held up a finger.

“Of course.”

Bee smiled and carefully shut the door before she whirled on Moira. “What are you doing?” she hissed.

“We have plans.”

“We were going to eat dinner and study. Let’s eat dinner with them” she pointed at the door, “and  _not_  study!”

“Bee, we have an exam next week.”

“And we have the rest of the weekend to revise for it. There are two gorgeous talented men wanting to have dinner with us. I know you don’t understand who they are, but for me, turning down dinner with them would be like you turning down dinner with…,” she paused, waving both arms about as she sought for a proportional example for Moira so she would understand the immensity of the situation, “with Aslan!”

Moira clapped her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing but she rolled her eyes as if she were humoring a demanding child. “Fine, we’ll go have dinner with them.”

Bee squealed and jumped up and down before she composed herself, smoothed her hair and opened the door. “We’d love to have dinner with you. We’ll be up in a few minutes.”

Zach smiled and took Bee’s hand and placed another kiss on it. “I can hardly wait.” He didn’t quite go into full smolder, but Bee held her breath to keep from squealing again. Moira shut the door and then closed her eyes as Bee started flailing her hands.

“Come on girlie, I’ll lend you a hairbrush.”

A few minutes later, during which Moira had put on a clean shirt and Bee had redone her makeup, they knocked on Tom’s door. He opened it with a sweeping gesture, welcoming the two women to his flat. “I’m so glad both of you could join us.”

“Thanks for the invitation.”

“I hope you don’t mind that we’re dining rather informally.” He gestured to the trays of food on the coffee table and the pillows on the floor around it. “Zach and I usually don’t stand on formality.”

Moira smiled. “Well, I’m going to have to go home now and put on my informal pants.”

Tom’s eyes widened and his tongue flicked out to wet his suddenly dry lips.

Moira laughed. “American pants. Trousers. I don’t have formal panties.”

“Ah.” Tom forced himself to change the topic because he was  _not_  going to be a flirt tonight. You’re just friends, Thomas. Remember that. Just. Friends. “Grab a pillow.”

Moira sank down on one of the many cushions scattered around the table and Bee curled up gracefully on another one. Tom finished pouring the wine while Zach broke the chopsticks apart and handed them out.

“They gave us six pairs. I think that’s a commentary on how much food we ordered.”

Tom looked at all the bento boxes spread across the table. “You’re the one who couldn’t decide what he wanted to eat and decided to get all of it.”

“Yes, well, at least this way we get beautiful dinner companions out of it.”

Moira choked on the sip of wine she had just taken. “Oh mercy, he’s just like you.”

“What do you mean?”

Moira arched her eyebrow. “Irrepressible flirt.”

Tom grinned at her and Moira couldn’t help but smile in return. “Well, he is known for the smolder.”

“The what?”

Bee clapped her hands together. “The smolder!”

Moira looked at Bee, her brows coming together in concern. “Do I even want to know what that is?”

Bee patted Zach’s arm. “Do it!”

Zach laughed and rolled his eyes before he shifted his weight on the pillow, dropped his head, and then slowly looked up, his eyebrow cocked and mouth pursed. Tom couldn’t decide which reaction was funnier, Bee’s poorly suppressed fangirling, complete with both hands covering her face, or Moira laughing at Bee’s poorly suppressed fangirling. He was taken aback when she turned to him.

“Alright, Blondie, let’s see you do it.”

“Do what?” Tom couldn’t believe this. She wasn’t seriously asking him to turn on the charm, was she?

“The smolder.”

Tom waved both hands in surrender. “That’s Zach’s trademark.”

“Oh come on, you try it. Look at me like Henry would look at Catherine.”

Zach rubbed his hands together and Tom looked at him sternly before he turned back to Moira. “You watched Henry V?”

“No, not yet, so it will be a surprise. Show me what you got.”

Zach put his elbows on the table and rested his chin on his hands, eyes wide with excitement. Tom put his chopsticks down before he took a deep breath. He had to get into character for the look to work and not seem pitiful, so he backed up a little in the scene and started part way through one of the long sections of dialogue.

“Thou hast me, if thou hast me, at the worst, and thou shalt wear me, if thou wear me, better and better.” He rolled forward and went to a kneel in front of her and extended his hand. “And therefore tell me, most fair Katherine, will you have me? Put off your maiden blushes, avouch the thoughts of your heart with the looks of an empress, take me by the hand, and say “Harry of England, I am thine,” which word thou shalt no sooner bless mine ear withal, but I will tell thee aloud “England is thine, Ireland is thine, France is thine, and Harry Plantagenet is thine,” who, though I speak it before his face, if he be not fellow with the best king, thou shalt find the best king of good fellows. Come, your answer in broken music, for thy voice is music and thy English broken. Therefore, queen of all, Katherine, break thy mind to me in broken English. Wilt thou have me?”

Moira blinked in surprise. This was not the cad from upstairs; this was a man professing his love. Reaching back to her high school’s production of Henry V, she searched for her lines.

“Dat is as it sall please de roi mon père.”

A smile flickered across Tom’s – or was it Henry’s face? – at her response. “Nay, it will please him well, Kate; it shall please him, Kate.”

She placed the tips of her fingers in his waiting hand. “Den it sall also content me.”

“Upon that I kiss your hand, and I call you my queen.” He bent forward to kiss her hand and was almost surprised that she yanked it back. A liquid babble of French fell from her lips.

She clutched her hands to her chest. “Laissez, mon seigneur, laissez, laissez! Ma foi, je ne veux point que vous abaissiez votre grandeur en baisant la main d’une—Notre Seigneur!—indigne serviteur. Excusez-moi, je vous supplie, mon très puissant eigneur.

“Then I will kiss your lips, Kate.” He rocked forward onto his hands and knees and leaned towards her and she hesitated before she leaned back.

“Les dames et demoiselles pour être baisées devant leur noces, il n’est pas la coutume de France.”

“Madam my interpreter, what says she?”

Bee jumped in. She’d watched this scene approximately 42,000 times so she could do the nurse’s part. “Dat it is not be de fashion pour les ladies of France—I cannot tell wat is baiser en Anglish.”

Tom shot her a smile of gratitude. “To kiss.”

“Your Majesté entendre bettre que moi.”

“It is not a fashion for the maids in France to kiss before they are married, would she say?”

“Oui, vraiment.”

Tom brought his attention fully back to Moira, though he had never completely looked away from her. He leaned in closer and brushed his fingers against her cheek. “O Moira, nice customs curtsy to great kings.”

Her lips parted as he bent to her and then her eyes widened and she crabcrawled backwards. “That was…really good.” She nodded a few times and tucked her hair back as she licked her lips. “Ummm,” her eyes finally left his face and darted around the room, looking at anything except him, “I think I need to use the loo. Yes. Umm, excuse me.” She scrambled to her feet and limped across the room, opened the front door and walked out of his flat.

Bee, Zach, and Tom all looked at each other in confusion. “I’ll go check on her,” Bee volunteered and ran after her friend. She wasn’t in the hallway. She hurried towards the stairs, wondering what in the world Moira was up to. She looked down the stairwell and saw Moira standing in the corner of the landing half way between floors with her face resting against the wall. Bee flew down the stairs and wrapped her arm around her friend’s shoulders. “Are you alright, pumpkin?”

“He’s perfect, isn’t he?” The words were muffled against the wallpaper.

Bee nodded. “Yeah, he kind of is.”

“I made an idiot out of myself.”

Bee nodded again. “You kind of asked for it though. Asking him to go Henry on you? What did you think was going to happen?”

“Not that!” she wailed, waving her hand in the general direction of Tom’s flat.

Bee laughed and Moira turned to her. “What am I going to do? I can’t go back in there and eat with… _THAT.”_

Bee tucked Moira’s hair back out of her face as a grin spread across her face. “Alright, this is what we’re going to do.”


	7. Chapter 7

Tom and Zach looked up as Bee walked back into Tom’s flat with Moira trailing behind her.

“Is everything alright?” Tom asked.

“Oh everything’s perfect,” Bee waved her hand dismissively. “Let’s get back to dinner.”

Tom looked from Bee’s smiling face to Moira who seemed fascinated by the inlay pattern of the hardwood flooring and decided to go along with the obvious falsehood for the sake of politeness. “Dinner it is then.”

He stood and helped Moira to her seat, worried that she was still limping a day later. She gratefully took his hand as she lowered herself onto the pillow and he tried to convince himself that her fingers lingered a moment more than was strictly necessary before she let go. He seated himself again and refilled everyone’s wine glasses before Bee said, “So, both of you have done stage, television, and film. Which do you prefer?”

Tom and Zach looked at each other and started laughing. “That’s like asking a parent to pick a favorite child.”

Bee shrugged with a languid elegance. “Well, I’m my parents’ favorite, so you can choose.”

“They’re so incredibly different, though,” Tom insisted.

Bee smiled as Tom and Zach got into a long discussion about the benefits of each – the thrill and connection of a live audience, the adrenaline rush of knowing there was no chance for another take, but then you have the long subtle character development that the time frame of a television show allows and expansive story arcs, but with films you get the luxury of longer shooting schedules and higher production budgets – of course they’re not all  _Thor_ and the  _Avengers_  – but they were three entirely different species.

Bee shot a glance at Moira who was smiling into her glass of wine. Bee had promised that all she had to do was get Tom talking and he wouldn’t stop, and her plan was working. Moira was eating without having to keep up an end of the conversation or interact with Tom, but Bee’s secondary plan – the part she hadn’t told Moira – was to let her see the man that so many women swooned over. Listening to him talk about his love for acting in all its forms with one of his best friends, she couldn’t help but think that Moira would soften up a little bit. She was usually prickly about male attention, but c’mon girl, it’s Tom knicker-dropping Hiddleston. Grab the brass ring!

Bee’s plan got a bit of a hitch when Tom turned to Moira. “Have you acted before? You were an excellent Catherine.”

She covered her mouth with her hand as she finished the piece of sushi in her mouth. “In high school. Our drama teacher was rather ambitious and my senior year we did Henry V and I was Catherine.”

Tom leaned forward, resting an elbow on the table. “That must have been rather exciting.”

“I was pissed; I wanted to be Exeter or York.”

Tom’s laughter irritated Moira, who regarded him with her familiar scowl. “Why is that so funny?”

“But Catherine’s the most important woman in the play.”

Her face scrunched in disgust. “Who does nothing but flirt and giggle. Falling in love is fine and all, but I wanted something more exciting.”

Tom couldn’t help but laugh, even knowing it irritated her. “Now you sound like a Disney princess. Isn’t that straight out of one of the songs?”

She brandished her chopsticks at hi, “You talk smack about Disney princesses and I will burn your house down. Besides, you’ve got one sitting at the end of the other table. Don’t be rude.”

Zach cleared his throat. “I was the hero, not the princess.”

Bee giggled and put her hand on his arm. “Yeah, and you got smacked in the face with a frying pan more than once, so I’m not sure ‘hero’ is really the right term for you. Barely competent quasi-adult figure would be more accurate.”

Zach laughed and shot his finger guns at Bee. “That’s a surprisingly accurate assessment of Flynn Rider.”

Moira reached for another piece of sushi, her chopsticks pausing as she tried to decide which kind to choose. “I liked Eugene better anyway.”

“Wait, you’ve seen his movies but not mine?”

She looked up from the array of food, her eyebrows arching higher than he’d ever seen before. “Oooh, snobby much?”

Tom rubbed at his throat. “No, it’s just,” he searched for words.

Zach tilted his head, his eyes narrowing. “Yeah, what is it just?”

“I was just…  _surprised_  that you had seen it. You didn’t know what the smolder was earlier.”

She shrugged, not nearly as elegant as Bee but much more dismissive. “I’ve only seen it once. I tend to go older when I watch Disney movies.” She picked the unagi roll.

“What’s your favorite?”

She covered her mouth again as she chewed. “From which era?”

“You break your Disney movies into eras?”

The look she gave him made him feel three inches tall and incredibly stupid. “I’m serious about my Disney movies, okay? Trying to compare  _The Black Cauldron_  and  _Cinderella_  is really like comparing apples and elephants.”

“Isn’t the saying apples and oranges?” Zach asked.

She shook her head. “I hate that saying. They are both round fruit. They are quite similar. An apple and an elephant on the other hand,” she waved her hand, as if the rest were obvious and didn’t need to be stated.”

“It’s as perfect as a raven and a writing desk.”

Moira heaved a sigh, her shoulders slumping. “I loved the flowers in Alice in Wonderland. I loved their singing.”

“You like the music in Disney movies?”

Moira nodded, her cheeks rounding from her smile. “The drip drip drop sequence from  _Bambi_  is beautiful, and the vultures in  _The Jungle Book,”_

“We’re your friends,” Tom started singing and Moira clapped her hands in excitement, “we’re your friends, we’re your friends to the bitter end,” he gestured to Moira, who sang the last, “To the bitter end,” while he held out his note. They both dissolved in laughter while Zach and Bee eyed each other like they were planning an escape from the lunatic asylum.

“ _The Jungle Book_ is my favorite Disney movie,” Tom said.

Her eyes were wide with excitement. “I love it. Have you read the stories?”

He leaned forward and pitched his voice low. “O best beloved, I have.” Moira’s cheeks colored and she looked down, a surprisingly shy action from the outspoken lady. Tom couldn’t stop looking at her.

“Well, I don’t know about you guys,” Zach finally said into the lingering silence, “but I am stuffed. Do you want to go for a walk? Work off the food baby?” He puffed out his stomach to resemble a pregnant woman and stroked it lovingly while smoldering at Bee.

Tom finally tore his eyes from Moira who had looked up at him, blushed again, and then gotten fascinated by her wine glass. “I normally would, but Moira hurt her ankle yesterday so I don’t think she’s up for it.”

“Oh, well, we can do something else then.”

“No, you guys should go for a walk,” Moira said, her voice higher than normal, “that is, if Tom doesn’t mind me hanging out while you’re gone.”

“That would be lovely. We can watch  _The Jungle Book_  and sing along without those two rolling their eyes at our immaturity.”

Bee shot Moira a grateful smile as Zach helped her to her feet and the two of them quickly left.

Tom got to his feet and stretched his arms over his head, unkinking his back. “I think the sofa would be more comfortable for our little film festival than the floor.”

“You’re probably right.”

“Let me help you up.” He held out his hands and Moira took them. He steadied her as she got to her feet. “I’m worried that your foot’s still hurting.”

Moira waved her hand at him. “I was on my feet all day today between classes and then at the library. Luckily tomorrow I don’t have to go anywhere so I can just sit around with my feet up and read.”

Moira settled herself on the sofa as Tom slipped  _The Jungle Book_ into the DVD player. He sat at the other end of the sofa and patted his lap. “Put your feet up.”

Her forehead wrinkled as she frowned at him. “I’m not going to put my feet in your lap.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’ve been on my feet all day and they are stinky and gross and I’m not going to let you touch them.”

Tom’s eyebrow rose. “Have you ever smelt an actor getting out of a leather costume after fifteen hours of stunt filming? I think I can deal with your feet. Give them here.” He patted his lap again and she sighed but placed her feet in his lap. The film started as he undid the straps on her Mary Janes and set them on the floor. He pulled off her socks and then gently touched her sore ankle, looking to see if the swelling had gone down at all from last night. Moira hissed in air and he looked up at her. “I was going ask if you wanted to go to Great Maytham Hall tomorrow with me, but I don’t think you’d be up for the walking.”

“Probably not. What is Great Maytham Hall?”

“It’s the country house that has the gardens that inspired  _The Secret Garden._ I’ve never been there and I thought you might like to see them if you haven’t been there yet.” He started to rub her foot, being careful not to touch her ankle.

Her mouth formed an o as she regarded him. “That’s really nice of you. I haven’t been there. I typically don’t get hugely into the real world versions of things I read, but I can’t help but wonder if the gardens there match the ones I have tended in my head.”

“When you’re feeling better then.”

She looked down at her lap before she nodded. “That would be nice.”

“Are you going to be up for coming to the premiere on Tuesday? I can get you a special accommodations pass if you need it.”

She giggled. When did she start giggling? It was like he was seeing a whole new side to her this evening. Except the threatening to burn down his house part. That had seemed par for the course. “I think I’ll be fine. I might not go for my super high heels, but I don’t think I’ll need any preferential treatment. Except for getting Bee to come with me.”

“Well, you don’t have to worry. I got Bee a ticket. Though I think if I hadn’t, Zach would have. He seems a little smitten with your friend.”

Moira laughed and then groaned as he put pressure on a knot in the arch of her foot. He had to hold her foot still to keep her from wiggling it too much. “Boys usually are, but I think she actually likes him back. She tends to act like male attention is her due, but she was hanging on his every word while you two were discussing acting, and that whole touching his arm dealie. She likes him. Like, she liiiiiikes him.”

“That’s a very impressive display of vocabulary.”

She snorted “Ssshhh, Mr. Cambridge. And I could use some more wine if you reach that bottle without me having to move my feet.”

Tom reached forward and managed to get the tip of his middle finger in the neck of the bottle and tipped it forward, grabbing it before it spilled. He refilled her glass and she took another sip.

“You know, you’d get arrested for this in America.”

His brow furrowed in confusion. “For what, rubbing your feet?”

“No for corrupting a minor. Getting me all liquored up.”

Tom laughed, his head falling back. “Yes, well here we take a more civilized view on alcohol and think that if you don’t ban it, people learn how to drink responsibly.”

“MMmmmhmmm, and peeing on the pub wall at three in the morning is soooooo responsible.”

“I, myself, have never done that nor been present when someone else has.”

“And I know I’m just an uncivilized American, but next time we do sushi, we should get sake.”

“You like sake?”

She shrugged again. “I’ve never had it. But isn’t that the point of going to live somewhere new? Experience new things?”

“I think it’s at least part of it. What new things have you tried here?”

She scratched her head as she though. “I’ve learned how to ride the tube without getting lost. I’ve tried Perry, which I didn’t even know was a thing, I went to a football match and didn’t call it soccer, I spent hours poking around The Tower of London and Parliament and all the big touristy stuff. I figure that’s pretty good for my first few months here.”

“Is this your first year of university?”

“Yeah. I took a year off after high school to earn money. Getting to housesit so I’m not paying for a flat has been a huge blessing for me. Oh, and hobnobs! Those things are the bomb.”

“I have some in the kitchen if you want one.”

She scratched her chin with her finger. “Can you reach them without getting up?” she asked finally.

“No, my arms are long but they aren’t quite that long.”

She sighed dramatically and then laughed. “Then I’ll make do with my booze.” Tom stopped rubbing her foot and looked at her, his eyes narrowed slightly. The laughing slightly tipsy woman on his sofa was so incredibly different from the one who had burst into his flat a week ago.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

He went back to rubbing her foot, his thumbs working over the ball of her foot and earning himself another satisfied sigh. “I’m just wondering why you don’t show this part of you to more people?”

“Which part?”

“The sweet and charming part.”

She swallowed and some of the glow left her face. Her shoulders tensed and she sat up straighter. Finally she said, “Don’t cast your pearls before swine.”

“So does that mean you don’t think I’m swine anymore? Or that I’m having sexual relationships with them? Though I think pigs were one of the few animals you didn’t accuse me of molesting.”

Her shoulders relaxed a little bit at his jest. “Well, you’re definitely less swine like than before. Why don’t more people see this part of you?”

“Which part?”

“The sweet and charming part,” she repeated his words back to him with a bit of a tartness.

Tom’s hands stilled on her feet. This would be the chance to explain why he had treated her so differently before he had gotten to know her. “Because I can’t be this with everyone, and if one fan gets something extra, then it causes problems. Just responding to someone’s tweet can set off a flurry of hate. So I give them all the exact same hugs and smiles and lots of mass appearances instead of the smaller more personal ones I could do before I became Loki. Not that I’m pitying myself in any way, because what I have is amazing and Loki gave me huge opportunities. But I just have to be a lot more careful. The pelvic thrusting dancing sex god thing keeps all the fans happy, and it’s something I can easily do to please everyone.” He looked up at her

“I saw some of your Korea footage. You looked like you were having fun.”

“Yes, well, you’re not allowed to watch me on Alan Carr next week. I think I may have crossed a line.”

“You have lines?”

He chuckled and started rubbing her other foot. “A few. A man has to maintain some semblance of being a gentleman.”

“Because all gentlemen get tipsy while watching Disney movies.”

“You’re the one drinking,” he pointed out.

“Because you’re too busy being a gentleman and massaging my feet.”

“So you think I’m a gentleman now?”

“Either that or you’re a really good actor.  _Oh wait_.” She laughed so hard she snorted and then laughed even harder in embarrassment, covering her face with a widely splayed hand.

He waited until she was done laughing before he placed a hand on her knee. “How do I convince you that I’m not just playing at this?”

Her smile left her face and she took a sip of her wine before she answered. “Why do you need to convince me you’re a gentleman? It doesn’t sound like you need any more fans.”

“I don’t. But I have a feeling that you don’t kiss just anyone.”

Her head tilted to the side as he saw awareness dawning in her widening eyes. “You would be correct in that.”

“And if you thought I was a gentleman you would be more likely to let me kiss you.”

He could see the smile fighting to break out against her best efforts. “That is also correct.”

“So do you think I’m a gentleman?”

She tilted her head again. “Why do you want to kiss me?”

“Because I like you. I like that you love things passionately, even if other people think they’re silly. I like that you speak your mind. I like that you want to be a librarian and love books like I do. I like your feistiness. I like you.

“Yes, but do you liiiiiiike me?” She giggled into her wine glass.

He chuckled. “Yes.”

“Say it,” she ordered.

“I did say I like you.”

She giggled again. “But you didn’t say you liiiiiiiike me.”

“If I say it will you kiss me?”

Her eyes narrowed as she attempted to scowl, the effect ruined by her wide smile. “Maybe.”

Tom rubbed his throat, the tips of his ears turning red before he smiled and said, “I liiiiiiiiiiike you.”

Moira dissolved into a fit of giggles. “I think I might liiiiike you, too. Now that you’re being you and not a caricature.”

“Will you give me a sugar touch of your lips, Moira?”

Her laughter stopped at his words, and probably at the husky softness in his voice. Her eyes flared as she sat up, putting her feet back on the floor, and scooted towards him. He moved closer and she leaned in, stopping before her lips touched his. Her eyes were large and almost completely green as she looked at him. He tilted his head and leaned closer, his nose brushing against hers as her lips parted slightly and her breath brushed against his lips. He dragged his tongue over his bottom lip and she leaned forward and touched her lips to his.

He moved his mouth against hers, tasting the wine on her lips and the breath in her lungs. He lifted his hand to cup her face when the door burst open and Zach and Bee spilled into the room laughing.

“Oops, sorry mate. It started pouring rain.”

Tom fought the urge to shove his friend out in the hall and slam the door in his face as he turned around. Water was dripping off them on the floor. “I can see that. There must be puddles all the way up the stairs.”

Zach looked from him to Moira and back again and scratched at his beard as he realized what had been happening. “Sorry about the interruption. I guess I don’t get to punch you in the dick now.”

Wrinkles appeared between Moira’s brows. “Is that some sort of slang?”

“No, I made him a bet that he couldn’t get you to kiss him. Apparently he did so I don’t get to punch him in the dick for losing.”

“I was a bet?” Her voice was very quiet as she wrapped her arms around herself.

“It wasn’t like that,” Tom started but Moira cut him off.

Her eyes were wide and the throbbing muscle in her jaw betrayed to him how furious she was, even as she kept her voice under control. “You got me to kiss you because of a bet?”

“Well, yes, but I liked you before that.”

“But I thought you were an asshole,” she hissed as she stood up. “Well, I have one thing to say. You, sir, are a very good actor. Congratulations on your kiss-winning performance. Be glad that touching your dick is the very last thing I want to do right now or I would punch you myself.”

She bit her bottom lip so hard it was white as she walked to the door, where Zach and Bee were standing frozen, watching the whole proceedings with identical awkward, wide-eyed faces. She pointed a finger in Zach’s face. “You’re an asshole, too.”

And she left. 


	8. Chapter 8

Tom punched Zach in the arm. Hard. All that training for  _Coriolanus_  was paying off and Zach yelled, grabbing his bicep as his face contorted. “Dude!”

Tom smacked him in the arm again. “I can’t believe you said that in front of her!”

Bee punched Tom in the arm. Harder than Tom had punched Zach. She wasn’t training for a play, but she took kickboxing classes three days a week.

“What was that for?” Tom yelled, rubbing his arm.

“For making a bet about my friend! What kind of an arsehole are you? You’re lucky  _I_ don’t punch you in the dick.” She wheeled around to Zach. “You too! What kind of fuckwit, emotionally constipated, two year olds are you guys?”

Zach backed away from her, his eyes widening as he realized he was in as much trouble here as Tom was. “It wasn’t like that! I was betting Tom he couldn’t get her to kiss him. It wasn’t like I dare you to kiss her.”

“I don’t care what it was like!” She smacked him in the arm. “You made a fucking bet about my friend’s emotions. You turned her into a game piece and made her less than a human. Her kiss was a trophy to display rather than something to be savored, and if you can’t see that then maybe you should get hit upside the head with a frying pan again and see if you can figure that out because it seemed to work for Flynn. Maybe it will work on you, you little shit.”

Tom ruffled his hair with both hands, his eyebrows rising into a peak in the middle. “But I really do like her, Bee. It wasn’t just about a bet.”

“Well good luck convincing her of that now, you complete fucking idiot.” She punched him in the other arm. Tom’s mouth fell open and he emitted the sound of a velociraptor being strangled to death as he rubbed his arm. “Why do you think she’s so wary about males flirting with her? Maybe because she’s been toyed with before, you complete failure of a human. I swear, you’re both a waste of carbon.” She stormed out of the flat, slamming the door behind her so hard that the artwork rattled on the walls.

Tom and Zach looked at each other in a stunned silence as they adjusted to the sudden reduction in the number of angry females in the room. Tom rubbed at his throat. “I want to punch you again but after that I feel like it would be anti-climactic.”

Zach rubbed the top of his head as he slouched back against the wall. “I’m really sorry. I wasn’t even thinking about how they would respond to it. It slipped out.”

Tom blew out a mouthful of air as he ran his hands through his hair again. “Yeah, well I reserve the right to punch  _you_ in the dick if you don’t help me get this straightened out.”

The two men stared at each other for a bit. “So what are we going to do?” Zach finally asked.

“I don’t know. I think in the movies you buy her something, but somehow I don’t think that’s going to work in this situation.”

Zach’s face contorted into a mask of reluctance. He let his head drop back against the wall with a thud. “I think we’re going to have to grovel.”

“Go down there and beg?”

“Yes. Right now. “ He shoved himself off of the wall and put on a enthusiastic smiley face and held up both thumbs. “I’ll come with you. This is as much my fault as it is yours.”

The two of them made their way down the stairs and Tom squeezed his eyes shut as he knocked on Moira’s door.

There was no answer.

He knocked again with a little more force.

The third time he pounded on the door with the side of his fist and yelled, “I know you’re in there.”

This was met with a, “Wow, good use of your fancy pants Cambridge education,” being bellowed back.

“Moira, open the door.”

“No!”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want to see you, hence the leaving the door shut in the first place, you fucking moron.”

Tom glared at Zach and gestured at the closed door in exasperation. Zach’s eyes grew large and commanding. “Apologize!” he whispered.

Tom huffed and turned back to the door. “Moira, I’m sorry!”

There was a long silence and Tom thought maybe he was making headway when Rihanna’s “Take a Bow” started blasting from the other side of the door.

His mouth pinched together and his nostrils flared as he turned to Zach who was fighting back a smile. Tom glared at him and Zach shrugged. “Sorry, I thought it was funny.” He scratched at his cheek. “Do you want me to see if Bee’s here? Maybe I will have more success with her.”

“She called you an emotionally constipated two year old.”

“She called  _both of_ us emotionally constipated two year olds. But she’s also not the one who found out she got conned into kissing someone.”

The muscle in Tom’s cheek twitched as his jaw shifted to the side. “It wasn’t a con! I really like her.”

“Yeah, well, if I can get Bee to turn off the music maybe you can tell her that,” Zach said, his head bobbing in time with the sarcastic syllables.

Tom hmmphed and started pacing back and forth. “Fine.”

“Moira, is Bee there with you?”

The music turned off. “See?” Zach said to Tom, but his smug smile melted away when another song came on. They both looked at each other in confusion as the words started. “All I can say is that my life is pretty plain I like watchin’ the puddles gather rain…”

Zach oh-ed in realization first. “It’s the bee girl video.”

“I’m going to take that as a yes.”

Zach leaned his forehead against the door. “Bee, please, this is all a big misunderstanding. We screwed up. Both of us. Completely and totally and we both deserve to be punched in the dicks. Please, just talk to us.”

The music stopped. Tom and Zach looked at each other, just waiting for another song to start. They both rolled their eyes almost identically when the chorus to “Don’t Speak” started blasting through the door. “Maybe we should let them calm down and try again tomorrow.”

Tom closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He hadn’t wanted to come down here right now anyway. “Ya think?”

Zach held up both his hands. “I’m going to go before you get any bitchier and I’ll come over tomorrow and we’ll try this again, okay?”

“Ten o’clock. I’ll do a full English breakfast and we’ll plot.”

“I’ll be there.”

*NSYNC’s “Bye Bye Bye” came blaring out of the flat as they walked down the hall. Tom stopped and every vein and tendon in his neck stood out in perfect relief as his jaw worked side to side. His hands turned into fists and he turned on his heel, heading back to Moira’s door but Zach grabbed his arm and yanked him back down the hall. “Come on. You’re just going to make it worse.”

“She’s being a jerk.”

“Yeah, well so were we.”


	9. Chapter 9

Tom looked at his watch when the pounding on the door started. Two twenty-seven in the morning. It had taken twenty-seven minutes of him blasting death metal through the speakers he had placed face down on his floor, screaming along in some approximation of a dying animal, and accompanying himself on the kitchen drum set he had constructed out of all of his pots and pans with drumsticks improvised out of large metal spoons for Moira to break and come pound on his door. Thanking the gods that all of his other neighbors were nice little old ladies who turned their hearing aids off at night, he flipped off the stereo and opened the door with a joyous smile.

“Moira, what a delight to see you.”

The scowl was back. He had not missed the scowl. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

She was wearing those same purple shorts she had worn the first time she had burst into his flat, but this time she was wearing a black vest that stretched over her breasts in a way that made him want to be a cotton plant just to have the infinitesimally small possibility of one day hugging her body like that. “Well, I wanted to talk to you earlier and it didn’t seem like a suitable time for you, so I thought maybe you would be less busy now.”

She did not seem inclined to participate in polite conversation as she stormed into his flat. “Do you really think this is going to help your case in apologizing, you dickfungus?”

Tom was taken aback. “Dickfungus?” he asked, blinking.

Her mouth had pressed into a firm line, her jaw jutting forward, and both hands were on her hips as she advanced on him. “I would just call you a dick, but that would insult the nice penises I’ve known in my time.”

Ah. Right. “So I’m a yeast infection.”

“Annoying, itchy, makes basic bodily functions unpleasant, puts you off sex entirely.” She counted off his attributes on her fingers. “I think it’s a pretty good analogy for having come up with it on the fly.”

Tom’s shoulders sank and he sighed deeply. His head tilted to the side, his eyebrows forming an inverted vee. “Am I really that reprehensible to you?”

Her eyes widened. “You mean besides the whole betting your friend you could get me to kiss you?”

He nodded. “Besides that, which I admit was a caddish thing to do.”

“Caddish.” She rolled her eyes as she gagged. “God, it’s like you masturbated to  _Pride and Prejudice_  instead of  _Playboy_ growing up.”

His jaw contorted to the side. Why was she so infuriating when he was trying to apologise? Why did she hide how charming and playful she was under a solid layer of heinousness? “I did  _not_  masturbate to  _Pride and Prejudice_.”

“Well you obviously jacked off to something because you are a massive wanker.”

Well, two could play at that game. He moved forward and murmured, “Do you really want to hear about my masturbatory fantasies, dearest Moira?”

Her eyes widened again but this time her pupils flared as well and her breath caught. Her eyes fell to his mouth and he licked his lips. He watched her eyes track the movement of his tongue before she looked back up to his eyes. “No,” she whispered.

“Can I please apologize now for the way I behaved?”

Her eyes fell from his and her jaw jutted out again, though a little less than it had previously. “Starting from the moment you were born?”

“Why are you so determined to hate me? I admit it. I fucked up by taking that bet, but it was because you intimidated me. It wasn’t ‘I dare you to kiss the hag’ but ‘I bet you don’t actually have enough game to get a girl like that to fall for you.’ Zach was insulting me, not you.”

“Which makes it slightly less offensive, but whatever happened to asking a girl out on a date?”

He tore at his hair in exasperation. She was as slippery as an eel but he was _not_  going to let her off this easily. “I did, remember?” he yelled. “I asked you out _multiple_ times and you told me to get to know you better,  _so I did_. And I found a girl who sings Disney songs and can do Shakespeare with me and who loves hobnobs and has absolutely no tolerance for wine and I kissed her because I liked the girl I got to know. Not to win a bet but because I like you. Why is that so fucking hard for someone as smart as you to understand?”

“Because!” she yelled back, stamping her foot.

His fists rested on his hips as he glared at her. “Because why?”

He watched as she fought for words, her eyes moving almost as much as her lips. “Because you have  _horrible_  taste in watches.” She wouldn’t meet his eyes, instead staring at the point over his head where the walls met the ceiling.

He stared at her in confusion. “What?”

“Look at it.” She waved at his arm. “It’s all ugly and huge and digital. And you wear your pants too tight and you suck at making a heart with your hands and you turn straight men gay and women into a puddle and guys like you don’t like girls like me unless it’s a prank and I was right. It was a joke.”

Tom looked down at the watch and then back at her still confused. “I’m not sure what the watch and the trousers have to do with anything, but the bet just gave me the incentive I needed to keep pursuing you when you did your best to shove me away.”

“But how do I know this isn’t a bet as well?” Her face softened and she looked down at the floor. “How do I know that anything you might do in the future isn’t a bet?”

Tom ran his fingers along her hairline, pushing her hair back out of her face. That she let him touch her at all was a huge step forward. “All I can do is give you my word.”

She looked back up at him and there were tears welling in her eyes. He wanted to punch himself in the dick now. “I feel like I got yanked from  _Henry V_  to _Taming of the Shrew_  tonight. I actually thought that maybe, just  _maybe,_  you might actually like me, and then,” she shook her head and looked back down, “it’s like history barfed on me.”

“Are you saying that someone did this to you before, but to hurt you?”

She gave him a huge bright plastic smile. “Ding ding ding! And tell the contestant what he’s won, Bob!”

He nodded. “I’m going to take that as a yes.”

“High school sucks some time, okay?” She wouldn’t look at him again, and he was struck with an urge to go all Carrie on whoever had hurt her. “But it just makes me wary when gorgeous guys get all flirty and now you’re just more evidence not to trust people.”

He moved a little closer and touched her arm. She didn’t move away so he slid his fingers down her arm until he could intertwine his with hers. “Let me make it up to you. Let me fix this.”

“How?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know.  _Yet._  But please, let me fix this.” He watched her face, seeing the slight tremble in her bottom lip. “You’re a princess and not a shrew and I want you to feel that.”

Something about those words hit her the wrong way. “I  _know_  I’m a princess. You don’t have to prove that to me. The big question is whether or not you’re a prince. Right now I’m leaning towards bastard pretender to the throne.”

“Then, my lady,” he bowed over their joined hands and kissed the back of hers, “you have set me my quest. I shall prove to you that I am indeed a prince worthy of a fresh start and a new first date.”

He looked up at her from his position over her hand and winked. She was fighting to not smile, but he could see the slight rounding of her cheeks that meant she wasn’t furious at him anymore.

“Well, good luck with your quest.” She took back her hand, though it seemed to Tom that she let her fingers drag against his as she did so. “I am going to go be Aurora now. If I hear anything else from your flat I’ll have you thrown in the dungeons.”

“I’ll be silent as the grave.”

“See that you do.”


	10. Chapter 10

Tom put a full plate on the table in front of Zach and sat down with his own.

“So,” Zach said as he stabbed a link of sausage with his fork, “what are we going to do to get the ladies to forgive us?”

“Well, I talked to Moira,” Tom started.

Zach pointed his fork, still bearing half a sausage, at Tom. “When did you talk to Moira?”

Tom intently spread strawberry jam across his toast, making sure it was perfectly even, rather than look at Zach. “About two-thirty this morning?”

Zach put down his fork and stole the piece of toast from Tom. “You went and knocked on her door at two thirty in the morning?”

“No, I played really loud music and used my kitchen as a drum set until she came and talked to me.”

Zach stared at Tom, the piece of toast in his hand forgotten.  Tom couldn’t be serious. Could he? He sounded serious, but what sort of moron would do that? “You did?”

“Yes.”

Zach leaned back in his chair and looked Tom up and down for signs of obvious physical harm having been inflicted upon him. He hadn’t been limping but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. “And you’re not dead?”

“I got a bit yelled at, but she’s agreed to give me another chance.”

Zach shook his head. “Only you.” He bit into the toast and licked the extra jam from his lips.

“What?” Tom stole a piece of toast off of Zach’s plate and started spreading jam on it.

“Only you could be an obnoxious bastard and make it work to your advantage.”

Tom shrugged. “She called me a dickfungus.”

“Well, at least she held out against your charms long enough to insult you.”

Tom stopped his meticulous jam application and looked up at Zach. “She has a very creative vocabulary. Sometimes I think she must sit around and come up with new insults to fling at people.”

Zach’s shoulders sagged as if he was reliving the berating he had received the night previous. “Her and Bee both.”

“So, now that I’ve convinced her to give me a second chance, I just need to decide what to do to earn her trust again.”

They ate and thought and ate and thought and by the time they were both done with their fry-up, they had come up with exactly zero viable plans for earning their way back into the girls’ good graces.

Zach wiped the last of the egg yolk off his plate with the final bit of his toast. “I don’t think this is something a grand gesture is going to fix, dude. We’re going to have to earn it.”

“I believe that you’re correct.” He stood and picked up both of their empty plates. “These labors should prove to be more enjoyable than those of Sisyphus, however.”

“I think we need a new bet,” Zach yelled at Tom as he went into the kitchen.

“What?”

“If you make a reference to something that happened more than twenty years ago while I’m in London, I get to punch you in the dick.”

Tom came back out and regarded Zach with narrowed eyes. “But what about Shakespeare?”

Zach made a mockery of a mournful face as he slowly shook his head. “No Shakespeare.”

“Absolutely not.”

Zach snorted. “Chicken.”

Tom’s chin sunk to his chest as he sighed. “I would just like my dick to live unbruised.”

“That’s Shakespeare, isn’t it? You used Shakespeare to talk about your dick.” Zach mimed shooting himself in the mouth.

“Come on. I’m going to go ask Moira if she wants to go to dinner tonight and you can get Bee’s number from her.”

Moira opened the door to her flat with a huge mug of coffee in one hand, her hair in disarray.

“Good morning, Sleeping Beauty.”

Moira regarded him with half-closed eyes.  _Note to self, she is not a morning person._  “Good morning, Prince Bastard.”

Zach turned to Tom in confusion. “I thought you said she forgave you.”

“I said she is giving me a chance to earn her trust back. That’s different.”

Moira stared sleepy-eyed at the two of them over the rim of her cup and inhaled deeply. “Did you boys need something?” she finally asked.

“Ah, right.” Tom remembered that he need to actually talk to the lady in the purple bath robe appliquéd with what he was fairly certain was the hookah-smoking caterpillar from _Alice in Wonderland_. “I was wondering if I could take you to dinner this evening.”

“I actually have plans, but thank you for the invitation.”

“Oh.” Tom was taken aback. “Last night you said you didn’t have anything to do today.”

“Well, I’ve made plans since then.”

Tom swallowed back the irritation knotting the muscles in his shoulders. “Are you just trying to avoid me? I thought you said you would give me a chance.”

“No.” Her eyebrows were edging dangerously close to scowl territory. “Bee and I made plans.”

“Oh.” Tom rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, I hope the two of you have an enjoyable evening.”

“Thank you.” She took another swallow of her coffee.

“Speaking of,” Zach said, “do you think it would be possible for me to get Bee’s number from you?”

“You’re going to wade into that lion’s den, are you?” She shook her head as she rubbed at her eyes. “Let me go find my phone.”

She wandered off, her face buried in her mug, and Zach elbowed Tom in the ribs. “That was smooth.”

“What?”

“Accusing her of lying when she says she has plans.”

Tom pulled at his shirt, feeling like his skin didn’t fit and his clothes itched at his conscience. “So I overreacted a bit. What can I say? She gets to me, okay.”

“She reminds me of Kat.”

Tom rounded on Zach. “What?”

He backed up a step. “She reminds me of Kat Dennings. You know, same sort of shape, same sort of attitude about the world.”

“Well there’s a comparison I didn’t need made.”

“I thought you and Kat split on good terms.”

“We did, but being told that the girl you’re currently interested in reminds you of an ex sort of casts a pall of gloom over it, don’t you think? You’ve already tried this flavor, it wasn’t your favorite.”

Zach snorted. “Well, you didn’t gag on the first taste either. I mean, you had a second scoop.”

“Are you talking about ice cream?” Moira asked.

Tom and Zach both whirled back to face Moira, who they had not heard come back. “Uh, no.”

Moira held the screen of her phone to Zach so that he could copy down Bee’s information and he started entering it into his iPhone, his mouth silently mouthing the numbers.

Tom smoothed his hand down the front of his shirt. “Well, since you’re busy tonight, perhaps I could take you out to dinner tomorrow?”

“That would be nice.”

“Do you have any particular requests? Things you hate or are allergic to?”

She smiled up at him. “I love tiny little hole-in-the-wall places. You know, four tables and mom cooks and dad serves and the teenage kids are washing dishes in the back.”

“I think I can manage that. I’ll pick you up around seven?”

She nodded, still peering at him over the edge of her coffee mug. The blue glaze on the porcelain brought out the blue in her eyes and Tom found himself staring at her until Zach pointedly coughed. Moira looked down into her coffee and then took a large drink. “I’ll see you tomorrow at seven.”

“Right. Until then.”

“Good luck with Bee.” Moira shut the door as she muttered, “You’re going to need it.”

The men looked at the closed door and then at each other. “So, I’m going to call Bee and see if I can get her to forgive me. Thanks for breakfast and I’ll call you with an update on how things stand.”

The two men hugged and Zach headed down the stairs as Tom climbed back up to his floor. A few hours later he was surprised to hear a knock at the door. He hadn’t buzzed anyone in. He opened the door to see Moira looking at him in exasperation. “Will you please come to dinner tonight so Bee can tell Zach that he can come to dinner tonight and she won’t miss out on any time with him since he is only here until Wednesday because apparently she is in love.”

Tom laughed, his tongue caught between his teeth. “Wow, that’s an enthusiastic invitation.”

She did not it was nearly as funny. Her hands rested on her hips. “What is it with girls throwing away their plans when a boy shows up? I didn’t toss over our plans for you, did I? No.” Her pointed chin bobbed emphatically. “But whatever. Do you want to come over?”

Tom nodded. “I’d love to. Are we going out or should I bring something?”

“We’re eating in. Dinner and then my favorite movies.”

“Which are?” His head tilted to the side.

She zipped her lips and shook her head.

“I shall await this evening with bated breath, then.” He brushed his fingers down her arm, hoping to reestablish some of the intimacy they had enjoyed for a brief moment in the wee hours of the morning.  “Do you and Bee take turns picking the films for girls’ night?”

“Well, actually,” she looked down at his hand and slowly linked her fingers with his, “it’s my birthday today so she’s taking me to a spa for the afternoon and then dinner and movies.”

“Happy birthday! You should have said something.”

“No, because it’s not a big deal.” She pointed a finger in his face.  “And no bringing me a present, Hiddleston.”

“Why would I do that?”

She scowled at him, but its effects were quite charming when she was also fighting back a smile. “Because you’re so abominably polite.”

He moved a little closer to her and dipped his head. “Do you want me to call Zach and get him to back out of this evening so you can have your girls’ night?”

She shook her head. “No, it’s fine.” She looked at him out of the side of her eyes. “If you make fun of my movie choices though, I’m kicking you out.”

“Understood. I’ll be on my best behavior.”

“Good.” She pulled her hand back and poked him in the chest, though the way she did it seemed more like she was stroking him and less like she was jabbing him. “I’ll see you tonight.”

She left and he leaned against the door.  _What should I get her for a birthday present?_


	11. Chapter 11

Apparently Moira liked really bad movies. Movies that were so bad that they doubled back over into amazingly awesome. They had already watched  _Zorro the Gay Blade_ , because who didn’t need to see an early eighties version of Zorro where George Hamilton played both the masked crusader and his long-lost identical twin (and flamboyantly gay) brother who now goes by the name of Lieutenant Bunny Wigglesworth? Especially when Hamilton was flirting with the charmingly gap-toothed and lisping Lauren Hutton?

That had been the accompaniment to the most amazing spread of tapas that Tom had ever enjoyed in his life. Apparently when Bee decided to throw her best friend a birthday party, she did not go about it half-heartedly. He had discarded the party had because the elastic had started to hurt, but Moira was still wearing her tiara. It wasn’t quite the Crown Jewels, but it was quite impressive.  

 _Zorro_ had been followed by  _The Pirate Movie_ , another early eighties treasure featuring a teen-age beach romance fever dream version of  _The Pirates of Penzance._ It was awful and hysterical and bizarrely funny and the experience may or may not have been helped by Bee deciding to give Moira a gastronomical tour of England’s breweries through tasting a score of microbrews to go along with a seven layer chocolate cake..

By the time they got to  _The Sound of Music_ , which Moira swore she didn’t think was a bad movie, she just insisted it was best viewed late at night and preferably tipsy with people who didn’t mind when she sang along, she had curled into his side and was resting her head on his shoulder in between musical numbers. She would even periodically stroke his thigh. He wasn’t sure what had won her over to his side. He had a few ideas, the first of which was the vulture plushy he had brought her as a present in the hope that they could be friends again, a sentiment to which she had made a loud gagging noise but then kissed him on the cheek and the vulture now was sitting in the middle of the table guarding the remnants of the cake. It could also have been that he had impressed her by knowing all the words to “I am the very model of a modern major general” and had sung along on key. Or it could just be the alcohol and chocolate. It seemed to have made every one very friendly this evening. Bee was practically in Zach’s lap at this point and the two had stopped paying attention to Julie Andrews a while ago.

When Moira started crying through her vocals as Maria walked down the aisle, Bee clambered off of Zach. “Alright, that’s the sign that it’s bedtime for the birthday girl.”

“I’m fine. It’s just so pretty.” She sobbed noisily. “He loves her so much and she’s so pretty and she’s not a problem, she just had to find her captaiiiiinnnnnn.”

Bee turned off the telly. “Yes, and someday your prince will come, sweetie.”

“That’s an entirely different movie.”

Bee rolled her eyes. Even drunk, Moira did not stand for mixing your pop culture references. “Alright, someday you can join a nunnery and find a captain.”

“But that’s heerrrrrr captain.” She flung her hands towards the now dark television. “I want myyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy captain.” She hit herself in the chest.

Bee held out her hands to Moira with the long-suffering patience of a friend who has been through this routine before. “We’ll go look for him tomorrow.”

Moira grabbed ahold of Bee’s hands like a drowning man to a life preserver. “Do you promise?”

“I promise.”

Moira got to her wobbly feet. She took a step and grimaced as she stepped on her sore ankle.

“Come here,” Tom said as he stood. “I’d normally just offer you a shoulder, but as wobbly as you are, I think carrying you is easier.”

He picked her up and looked at Zach. “Why don’t you make sure Bee gets home safe and I’ll get Moira tucked in?”

Bee’s eyes narrowed. “What kind of a fool do you think I am?”

“I promise. Nothing’s going to happen with me and Drunky McDrunkerson here. I’ll just make sure she’s safe and sound.”

“I’ll be fine.” Moira insisted. “Drunky can walk. Put Drunky down and I’ll go put me to bed myself. Me and Drunky are gonna get it on.”

Tom and Bee exchanged looks over Moira’s head as she started singing “I am Sixteen.”

“Come on, you carry, I’ll tuck her in.” Tom followed Bee down the hall and deposited Moira on the unmade bed and Bee pulled the blankets up over. “You go to sleep, birthday girl.”

“And tomorrow we’ll go look for my captain,” she reminded Bee.

“Yes. Now sleep.”

Bee ushered Tom out of Moira’s room and then shut the door behind her. “I know you wouldn’t have done anything, but this way I feel better.”

“Of course.” He bid farewell to Bee and Zach and made his way back up to his flat. He woke about two hours later to an insistent pounding on his door. He looked through the peephole to see Moira standing there. He shook his head, wondering what in the world she was doing up now, and opened the door.

She brandished her laptop at him. “You’re a captain.”

He looked at the screen of her laptop and saw his IMDB page. “Well, I’ve  _played_ a captain.”

She looked at him appraisingly, her eyes obviously travelling the length of him and then back up. He had a sudden regret for not putting on a shirt as she trailed a finger down his chest. “Do you want to be my captain?” Her alto voice had turned into a cat’s purr.

Tom hadn’t known it was possible for your entire body to twitch at the same time until that moment. “Uhmm, doesn’t your ankle hurt?”

“Yes it does.” She limped past him and settled herself on his sofa. “Now, do you want to be my captain?”

“Uh,” he shut the door, “I don’t think this is a conversation we should be having right now.”

“I’ll show you my tattoo.”

His chin almost touched his chest at her offer, his face warring between curiosity and reproach. “You have a tattoo?”

The tip of her tongue traced along her top teeth and she smiled like a spider that had just trapped a fly.

“Where?”

“Be my captain and I’ll show you.” Seriously. She had become part feline at some point in the past hour. And part spider. He felt trapped as she watched him with those big green eyes and a smile that somehow concealed pointed canines he was positive she must possess.

“That’s a very flattering offer and if you want to come over for dinner tomorrow,” he started babbling to keep his mind off the way the vee of her shirt showed off a generous amount of cleavage – when had she changed clothes? -  “and I’ll cook us up a little something and you can have one small glass of wine and if you still want me to be your captain I’ll take you up on that offer, but right now–,”

She huffed. “But I need someone to be my captain  _nooowwww._ ”

She wasn’t just a cat. She was a cat in heat. “And what is so time sensitive that it can’t wait another eighteen hours?”

She idly scratched her shoulder, pulling the neckline of her shirt over to expose a softly rounded shoulder and her bottom lip stuck out in a pout. “I didn’t get my birthday spanking yet.”

It was like getting the air knocked out of him. Her words hit him like a physical blow as the image of putting her arse across his lap, pulling down her knickers and rubbing his hand across those curves invaded his mind like Hannibal crossing the Alps. He opened his eyes to find her kneeling on the sofa, her elbows resting on the arm and her chin resting on her hands. She smiled with a predatory innocence and wiggled her bum.

His swallow was loud enough that it would have been heard in the back row of a theatre. “I think you should go home now.”

She shook her head slowly. “I can’t. My ankle hurts.” The bottom lip came out a little bit more.

“Then feel free to sleep on the sofa.” He turned around and started for his bedroom. He needed to get out of there. Now.

“How about I sleep in your bed with you?”

The offer stopped him in his tracks. What harm could come from just sleeping? He’d slept with girls before. Friends. In university. It hadn’t always ended up in sex. Alright, one time it hadn’t ended up in sex. Technically. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, but I’ll take the sofa if you want the bed.”

She stepped off the couch and walked over to him with a slight limp. “Oh come on Hiddleston, let me blow out the candle on my birthday cake.” She licked her lips as she looked him up and down.

“Moira, stop it. This isn’t you.”

It was like had had thrown cold water on her. The sexual predator disappeared and the cute, opinionated librarian was back. “You’re right, it’s not.”

Tom stepped back. “What the hell, Moira?”

She shrugged her shoulders playfully, like her chameleon change of personality was no big deal. “I just wanted to see what you would do if I came up here and hit on you.”

His jaw shifted to the side and the tendons in his neck were much more visible than they had been a few seconds earlier. “So this was just what? Some sort of test?”

“Yeah. It’s not nice to find out someone’s been playing with your emotions, is it?” Her chin jutted out as she stared up at him.

He inhaled a lungful of air and let it out slowly as he realized he’d been played. “No, it’s not.”

“I have to say, I thought you’d fall for it. Though, I think the birthday spanking idea got you a little hot under the collar. You’re a naughty boy, aren’t you?”

He ignored her laughter and stared at the floor as he ran his hand through his hair. He had deserved what she had done, but that didn’t make it any less irritating. Or the vision of his handprint outlined in red on the cheek of her rear any less arousing.

She picked up her laptop from off the sofa and smiled at him politely. “So seven?”

“Seven?”

“For dinner tomorrow.”

He stared at her in confusion.

“Dinner tomorrow?”

“Right. So I can remake the offer when I’m sober. I don’t know about spanking, but you could definitely get me to call you sir.”

He stared at her mouth. It was incredibly lush. He’s noticed how full it was before, but standing just a few inches away from it, he was hypnotized by the berry color, the swell of her lips, they way they revealed a hint of the perfect white rows of teeth they guarded as they waited, parted, for him to answer.

“Right. Seven.”

That lush mouth curved into a smile and she kissed him on the cheek. “Until tomorrow night then.”


	12. Chapter 12

Tom smoothed down the front of his jacket and tucked his cover under his arm before he opened the door. He desperately tried to keep a straight face as Moira’s mouth opened slightly and she looked him up and down, her eyes taking in the shining buttons and polished boots. Sometimes it was good to have friends who had access to wardrobe departments and borrowing a captain’s uniform had been a touch of genius.

She turned away from him and took a step down the hall when he grabbed her hand and pulled her back. The scowl he had gotten used to from so many meetings across this threshold was absent, replaced with laughter and a rueful shake of the head. “You’re a right bastard, you know that?”

“Actually, my parents were married when I was born.” He shut the door behind her and placed his cap on the entry table.

“You have the  _soul_  of a bastard.” She prodded one of the metal buttons on his chest.

He looked down at her as the prodding turned into more of a stroking. “Oh, you know you like it.”

“That’s the problem.” She touched the rank insignia at his neck. “You like toying with my emotions.”

“I’m not toying with you Moira.” She looked up at him and her hand stopped its tour of all the doodads on his coat. “I may act like a fool, but I promise I’ll always be honest with you. I’ve never lied about how attracted I am to you. And on that note, you look absolutely ravishing tonight.”

His eyes slowly slid down her form again, taking in the curves that the deep purple wrap dress revealed. An elaborately knotted teal belt showed off her hourglass figure. “Nice shoes,” he murmured as he gazed at what had to be four inches of stiletto heel. They were a slightly darker than the belt, and the open toe showed toenails painted in some sort of design.

 “I thought since you’re used to seeing me in my pajamas when I knock on your door that maybe dressing up would be a nice surprise. Of course, if I’d known you were going to wear a military uniform, I might have gone a bit more formal.”

“Come have dinner with me. Remember, you only get half a glass of wine.”

“I remember. I get drunk so easily. It makes me a cheap date.”

“Inexpensive maybe, but never cheap.”

They were sharing a chocolate and raspberry torte when Moira gestured at him with her fork. “So is this your way of saying you want to be my captain?”

Tom grinned and speared one of the raspberries with his fork. “Maybe; what does the job entail?”

“Well,” she sat back in her chair and set down the utensil, “that depends. Are you interested in being a temporary captain or are you applying for a more, permanent, position?”

He pulled at the collar of the suddenly too-tight jacket. This was where the conversation got serious and all the cheeky flirting gave way to honesty and vulnerability. This was the part he  _didn’t_  like. Sometimes just fucking was a much better option than engaging in a relationship. It was so much easier. Moira wasn’t just a fuck, though. She was an addiction. “I think I’d be interested in a long-term position. If you’re interested. Previously you seemed to think I was too old for the job.”

She started playing with a lock of her hair, weaving it back and forth between her fingers. After a few seconds she seemed to realize she was fidgeting. She shoved it behind her ear and tightly gripped her fingers together in her lap. “I’m still unsure about that. On paper it seems like a big deal. When I’m with you, though, it doesn’t seem like such a stumbling block.”

He scooted his chair over towards her so he could touch her with more than an extended hand across the small table. “I’m glad you’re at least considering letting me be something more substantial than a fuckbuddy.” He got distracted by the thin gold chains around her neck, each one with a different texture, and each dangling a pendant. The shortest one held a small thin slice of abalone shell right below the hollow at the base of her throat that he desperately wanted to get to know better, the marbled blues and greens capturing all the colors of her eyes. The second sported a hammered gold disk, and the third dropped the point of a gold arrowhead right between her breasts. The deep vee of her dress had been enticing enough without an arrow literally pointing to the beautiful anticipation of maybe getting to touch her glorious curves tonight. He realized he had been staring and looked back up at her to see her fighting back a laugh. He considered this progress since she probably would have – what was her phrase? Ah yes, ‘smacked him upside the back of the head’ a week ago.

His ears burned as he started to talk again. “I do have to say, the next two days are packed with press stuff for the premiere on Tuesday. If something does happen with us tonight, I don’t want you thinking I disappeared on you. I definitely want to see you Tuesday night. I won’t have time beforehand, but we’ll go to the after party together, alright?”

She touched one of the buttons on his jacket again, twisting it back and forth. Apparently he was not the only one distracted by shiny adornments. “You really want to take me to the after party?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

She shrugged and her hand dropped to the next button. “I thought you would be more discreet about it. We’d meet there, have a drink, a dance or two, leave separately.”

He took her hand and she looked at him again, a wisp of color dancing across her cheeks. “Is that what you want? I don’t want you feeling like I’m hiding you away for any reason.”

“I’ve learned a lot about you since I came pounding on your door in the wee hours of the morning, and you’re super crazy famous and I think I’d prefer the discreet option at first. I mean, I’m just a college student and I’d prefer not to have to deal with all the crazy stuff you do if someone took a picture of us together on Tuesday, and I’m fairly certain that premieres have an overabundance of cameras.”

He sat back in his chair though he didn’t relinquish her hand instead choosing to brush his thumb against the inside of her wrist. “You sound like you’re really going to give me a chance.”

“You’re gorgeous and talented and smart and you turning me down last night gave me enough evidence to nudge you over into the ‘not a complete jerk’ column. So, yes, I think I’m going to give you a chance.” She reached for her wine glass and drained the last little bit. “Of course, before you get hired as a captain, you have to demonstrate that you meet all the qualifications.”

He stood up and pulled her to a stand and led them to the sofa. He had a feeling this was not a dining table conversation. His mother had raised him with some respect for the amenities, after all. He sat and pulled her down onto his lap. She didn’t resist his forwardness, just crossed her legs at the ankle as she smoothed her skirt over her legs.  “Which ones do I still need to check off?”

That whisper of a color came back to her cheeks. “You still need to prove that you can make my toes curl.”

His hand tightened on her waist as he digested those words. “Would you like me to demonstrate that particular skill this evening?”

She moved to kiss him and he let her mouth almost brush against his before he pulled back, keeping just out of reach. “Tell me, Moira, do you want me to make your toes curl?” He wanted to hear the word from her. She’d shoved him away so many times that he needed to hear her ask for him.

“Yes.”

He leaned forward and closed the small distance between them. His arms wrapped around her waist as they kissed. Tom half expected Zach to burst in the door or to wake from a dream, but unlike previous nights, she didn’t disappear as their kisses lengthened. She could taste the wine on his lips as their tongues finally touched and she shifted on his lap as she kissed her way to his neck, her body pressing against his. He was hard beneath her thighs as she moved, one of his hands flat against the small of her back, the other reaching up to tangle in her short hair. She moved again, trying to turn to face him. Tom must have realized what she was attempting because he suddenly gripped her hips with both hands and lifted her, turning her so she was facing him, kneeling on either side of his lap. She settled back down on him, her skirt hitched up around her thighs as her lips met his again.

She whimpered softly as she felt him press up against her, a primal urge to rock against him starting to move her hips. His hands slid up the sides of her rib cage, pausing at her breasts. He cupped them in his palms, his thumbs sliding over to rub against her nipples. Even through her dress he could feel them respond to his touch, hardening under the caress. Moira gasped in pleasure at the sensation and then kissed him again. She began to undo the buttons on his coat, struggling to get them to open. She finally sat back and squinted at his jacket. “How the hell do you undo this?”

Tom chuckled and showed her the hidden buttons that actually held the placket shut. He helped her undo them and he shrugged out of the confining garment, tossing it on the distant arm of the sofa. Moira ran her fingers down his chest and he felt stupidly proud of the extra muscle he had put on in training for Coriolanus. They moved together, slowly learning each other’s bodies. Moira pulled his t-shirt off, wanting to feel his skin under her hands. She stroked him lovingly, teasingly, seeing if his own nipples were as sensitive as hers. She trailed her lips down his neck, leaning back from him so she could kiss his collar bone, his shoulder, the line of his triceps. Tom took advantage of this separation to undo her belt. His hands fumbled, trying to find somehow to unknot it.

“Dammit, girl, Loki’s costume was easier to get out of this,” he practically growled. She laughed and reached down to show him the hidden clasp under one of the knots. As he undid the belt, the wrap on her dress fell partly open. He pushed it slowly the rest of the way, his eyes on hers as the fabric slid off her shoulder, leaving her partially exposed. She watched him, fascinated by the worshipful expression on his face as he looked at her body. His hand found the hidden interior tie and with one slow tug, it came undone. He raised his hand to her other shoulder and pushed the fabric down her arm. She could have held on to the sleeves as they slid down her arms, giving her an easy way to cover herself quickly, but she let the dress fall and cover his feet.

Tom reached forward and slowly stroked one taut, lace-encased nipple. Her sound of pleasure was like music to his ears. She straddled his lap, wearing nothing but an elaborately embroidered bra and panties. He continued to stroke her nipple lazily as he used his other hand to cup her rear, pulling her even more snugly against his hardness. His hand met flesh, and he realized that she was wearing a thong. He groaned, realizing how close to naked her soft body was, and how close to him she was. He pushed upwards, grinding against her, and she met him, move for move.

His hand travelled up her spine, making her back arch in response. He deftly unhooked her bra and pulled it off. Moira helped him, breaking their kiss long enough to get rid of the unwanted clothing. He dipped his head, sucking a dusky nipple into his mouth, flicking it with his tongue. She gasped again, this time louder than before as he gently tugged at it with his teeth. Her hands clasped his head, not wanting him to stop. She whimpered disappointedly when he did.

“Moira.” She opened her eyes to find him looking at her. “If you want to stop, you just tell me, okay? I don’t care how far we go, if you want to stop, just tell me, and I’ll stop, okay?”

She nodded, slightly confused. He smiled at the look on her face. Her lips were swollen, her pupils dilated from pleasure. Her hair was disheveled from where he had been playing with it.

“But I don’t want to stop,” she murmured.

“Good,” he replied fiercely, “because I could stop if you wanted to, but I think it would kill me.”

He grabbed her by the hips again and surged to his feet. Moira wrapped her legs around him, her arms around his neck, and sought out his lips with her own. One of his arms under her rear, the other wrapped around her back. The hand on her back let go long enough for him to push open a door and a few steps more found him with one knee on the edge of a bed, and then the other as he laid her down on the covers of what had to be a king sized bed. He stood, and their eyes never left each other as he undid his belt and unfastened the trousers to his uniform. He toed off his shoes and stepped out of them and then crawled onto the bed, covering her body with his own. She spread her legs slightly so she could cradle him between her thighs, one foot reaching around to hook his calf.

“Oh no, Moira, there are so many things I want to do to you before we get to that point.”

“Like what,” she asked, as one of his hands started to trace distracting patterns on her side.

“You’ll see,” he responded with a slow smile.

He slid off of her to one side, trapping one of her arms underneath his, and hooked one of his legs over one of hers.Hhis other hand continuing to draw languid circles on her abdomen. He started kissing down her neck and when he got to her necklaces, he followed the path of pendants kissing down her chest until his mouth was right between her breasts. He cupped one, and it filled his hand to overflowing. He lazily brushed his thumb repeatedly across her nipple before he bent down and kissed a small circle around the hardened peak.

He slid his hand down her stomach, and teasingly tugged on the waistband of her panties. He watched as she arched her hips upward, trying to get closer to his hand. He slid his hand further down over the front of her panties, his fingers slowly delving between her thighs. He cupped her mound, his fingers pressing against the damp fabric, and bent to kiss her as she gasped at the intimate touch. Their tongues found each other as they kissed, both of their lips already swollen. He slowly stroked her pussy through the fabric, drinking in the little sounds of pleasure she made. Tom was already tenting the front of his boxers, just listening her respond to him. She had an unrestrained sensuality that was going to be the death of him. She might have bewitched him as Katherine, but he was going to surrender his loyalties to Moira, here in his bed tonight.

She was rocking against his teasing fingers before he pushed aside the wet fabric and slid his middle finger deep inside her. She clenched her thighs around his hand, holding his finger right where it was, so he crooked it and rubbed against her as his thumb sought out and found her clit. Her eyelids fluttered with the first delicate caress of the little nub and he kissed her again, suckling her bottom lip. Her legs spread slowly back apart as he stroked his finger gently in and out of her, his thumb rubbing small circles on her clit. He tenderly bit her bottom lip as he slid a second finger inside her with the first. She called his name as her hips bucked up against his hand. He bent his head to her breast, flicking his tongue against her nipple as he increased the speed of his hand.  Her fingernails raked his back as she whimpered, “Tom…please…”

He felt a satisfied smile spread slowly across his face as her watched the tension in her body building. He curved his fingers slightly, stroking inside her, relentlessly driving her to the climax. “Please what? Do you want me to stop?” His voice was teasing. Her eyes were almost frantic as she shook her head. “Oh, god, don’t stop!” Her voice climbed on the last word as he flicked her clit with his thumbnail. He had never seen anything as beautiful as her face as she approached orgasm. He spread his fingers inside her, stretching her open and her voice broke on his name as he flicked her clit again. She was so close. Her fingernails bit into his shoulder. She was going to leave her marks on him, and the knowledge made him even harder than he already was. He was throbbing with wanting her.

Her other hand was clenched in the thick comforter that was underneath her. Her heels dug into the mattress, seeking for purchase as she rocked her hips against his hand. He continued to slowly increase the speed with which his fingers stroked in and out of her pussy, her wetness dripping into his palm as he rubbed her.

“Moira,” he said softly. Her eyes latched on to his gaze. “Come for me.” His voice, deep and uneven with arousal, didn’t disguise the order. She exploded into a thousand shimmering fragments, both the desire in his voice and the sheer dominance in his tone combining to push her the final infinitesimal distance to her orgasm. Her legs locked around his hand, her nails cutting even deeper into his shoulder as she cried out his name.

She collapsed limply on the bed, gasping for breath, her body quivering periodically as waves of pleasure continued to wash across her body. He brushed her clit with his thumb once more as he withdrew his hand and she gasped as her body shook with the sensation.

He smiled down at her as he watched her recover. Before she had completely calmed he bent to kiss her. Slowly their lips moved across each other as they languorously enjoyed the brief intermission in the more vigorous action. Before too long, Tom broke the kiss and started kissing down her body. Moira was slightly surprised that he kissed down her sternum without pausing to pay attention to her breasts, but wasn’t surprised to feel his hands tugging her panties down impatiently. She lifted her hips and then her feet in turn. He stood at her feet, gazing up her body. “Damn, you’re beautiful.” He leaned forward and traced his fingers over her tattoo, a small stack of books right over her pelvic bone where it had been hidden previously by her knickers. He kissed each book and she laughed.

He stripped out of his boxer briefs and his cock sprang to attention. He stroked it a few times, almost reassuring it that it would indeed get some attention tonight.

“Aren’t you just full of delightful surprises?” she said as she contemplated the new arrival.

He reached for the nightstand and opened the top drawer.

“You don’t have to if you don’t want.” Her voice was quiet and slightly unsteady. His hand paused as he looked back at her. “I mean, I’m assuming you’re clean, right?” He nodded slowly. “Well, I’m on that injection, so we don’t have to worry about anything happening.” He shut the drawer.

He climbed back on the bed and kissed his way back up her body, her ankle, her calf, her knee, her inner thigh. His hand made a similar journey up her other leg, squeezing and kneading her soft skin. She instinctively spread her legs for him. His tongue reached out and flicked against her swollen clit. Her little sound of pleasure made him realize he couldn’t wait anymore. He knelt between her legs, took his cock in his hand and stroked the head up and down her pussy several times, getting it nice and wet. Her hips were already moving up towards him. He slowly slid just the head inside her and she moaned softly. When he pulled back she whimpered disappointedly. He couldn’t decide who he was teasing more, her or himself, as he repeated the sweet torture several times. Her breath was already coming in little gasps and his wasn’t exactly steady either. He couldn’t resist her body any longer. He grabbed her hips, digging his fingers into her tantalizing curves before lifting them slightly, and with one steady push, he drove himself into her, as deep as he could get.

He was not expecting her cry of pain.

He froze.

“Are you okay?” He internally berated himself. Of course she wasn’t okay. Her forehead was creased with pain, and her eyes were sharp, instead of the glazed pleasure they had possessed a moment earlier. He started to pull out.

“Stop.” Her voice was quiet but sounded assured. He paused. “Just don’t move for a moment. I need to get used to you being inside me.” She wasn’t meeting his eyes.

A sudden suspicion arose in his mind. “Are you…a virgin?”

She still wasn’t looking at him. “Not anymore.” There was the barest hint of laughter underlying those words. He gently tilted her head so she was looking at him.

“You truly are amazing.” He wasn’t sure what he was expecting in her eyes, but the wave of relief that crossed her face at his words definitely was not it. “We can stop if you want.”

“I will not be responsible for you dying from sexual frustration,” she said with a touch of her old sense of humor in her smile. “Just…give me a minute. Okay?” She looked up into his eyes, questioningly.

“Of course.” His brows were drawn together as he gazed down at her, his eyes filled with concern.

She shifted her hips slightly to the left and he held perfectly still. She was so tight that every movement was an exquisite torture. She pushed up slightly with her hips and her exhale contained a note of pleasure. She repeated the motion and again a soft sigh escaped her lips, a slight smile curving her mouth.

He bent down and kissed her as he took her hands in his and pinned her arms above her head. With one large hand, he held both of her wrists. He supported his weight on his other forearm and slowly, so slowly, started to move inside her. Their lips met once again, long tender kisses that mirrored the gentle movement of his body into hers. Their gentle kisses slowly morphed into more passionate caresses as Moira’s body was flooded with pleasure once again. She wrapped her legs around his hips, canting her body upward, giving him a deeper reach within her. He released her wrists and levered himself into a kneeling position. He hooked one of her legs over his forearm, and reached down between them with his other hand, finding her clit again.

Moira gasped at the touch, and as he drew his fingers along the sides of her swollen flesh, she arched up against him, seeking relief from the building tension. She could hear him talking to her over the sound of her blood pounding in her ears. “That’s right, baby, just like that.” His voice was like a drug in her veins. A hot rush of pleasure cascaded through her veins at the sound of his words, leaving her barely able to talk.

“Tom,” she pleaded, not sure of what else to say. His cock was throbbing, thickening inside her. His hand gripped her waist as he thrust harder inside her. He could tell how close she was by the way she was digging her fingers into the bed. He placed her leg back around his waist and lowered himself down to kiss her again. He rested his forearms on either side of her head and after one hot kiss, moved his lips to her ear. “Let your toes curl, baby,” he whispered. She wrapped her arms around his neck as he kept talking. “After tonight, you’re mine, Moira. All mine.” She cried out as she came, her nails raking down his back. Her pussy rhythmically spasmed around his cock, and he lost his last fingerhold on control, and met her orgasm with his own. She clung to him, holding him close as he came deep inside her body.

***

He lay flat on his back, Moira cradled against his side, her head resting on his shoulder as she stroked his chest. He had one hand under his head, and with the other he was running his fingers slowly through her hair.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked. His voice was quiet.

Her hand stilled. “There didn’t seem to be an appropriate moment. This is our first solo date after all.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he repeated.

There was a long pause. “I was afraid,” she whispered.

He rolled over on his side so they were facing each other. Her head rested on his arm, and his other hand rested on the soft dip of her waist. “Afraid of what?” he asked, concern and confusion warring in his voice. His eyes searched her face. “Afraid of me?”

“More like…afraid of your reaction?” She sounded unsure. “I mean…what’s wrong with her that she hasn’t cashed in her v-chip and she’s twenty?”

“Alright, first, you’re barely twenty. And second, I don’t know what kind of fucked up world you normally live in, but there is nothing wrong with being a virgin at any age. Losing it not some sign of adulthood. In my experience, it’s usually a sign of immaturity, in fact.”

Her smile was fleeting and she went back to tracing the contours of his chest.

“There’s something more, isn’t there?” For all she was willing to yell at him, she was remarkably reluctant to actually talk to him.

“I didn’t think you’d be able to tell. I mean, I have masturbated. You’re just considerably more than what I’m used to.”

He knew that wasn’t it. “What else?”

She rolled her eyes as she flopped back on the pillow. “Do you  _really_  want to hear this story?”

“Yes.” He leaned over her so his face was just a few inches from hers. “Frankly, I’m a little mad at you for not telling me you were a virgin. I would have been more careful.”

She kissed his chin. “ _You_  have nothing to apologize for. I should have told you. So the story is like this. Once upon a time when I was fourteen, one of my male friends said that the reason he talked to me the first time was because ‘fat girls make easy lays.’ And I decided right then that I was  _not_ going to be an easy lay. So whenever a guy would get close to me, I’d do some version of what I did to you last night, where’d I pretend to be drunk and come on to them. And they all would have been happy to fuck me, even though they thought I was wasted out of my mind. After a while, I just stopped letting guys get close to me.”

“So why now? Why me?”

She laughed. “For someone who has a reputation for being brilliant, you sure are dumb sometimes. Because I finally found someone that I really liked, someone I could see a future with, and he didn’t want just a lay. He wanted me. I found you or maybe you found me, but whichever way it was, I know that whatever happens in the future between us, I won’t regret tonight.”

He kissed her softly. “I’m glad. But just to be on the safe side, I think I need to do something now.”

Her brows came together. “What?”

"I think I need to make your toes curl again. Just to be absolutely positive that there will be no regrets about tonight."


	13. Chapter Thirteen

Moira stood at the cocktail table, scanning the crowd for Tom. She thought someone would make an announcement when the stars showed up, but she wanted to be safe. Not that she could go running up to him anyway. She hadn’t seen him since the wee hours of the morning Monday when she’d gone back to her own flat, and the texts they’d exchanged had been short and sparse. She knew he was busy. She kept telling herself that was why she hadn’t seen him or heard from him, but part of her was absolutely convinced that now that he had conquered Mt. Everest, she’d never see him again.

Bee put a hand over hers. “Stop stirring your martini. The bartender did that for you.”

Moira looked down at the onions embedded on the swizzle stick and dropped it back into the drink.

“What are you so fidgety about anyway? You’re as nervous as a mama cat with kittens.”

She smoothed her hand over the front of her dress. She didn’t normally wear bright red, but Bee had talked her into it, and the dress fit like a glove over her torso before it flared into a cute a-line skirt. She fiddled with the tiny patent leather belt and forced herself to stop as Bee stared at her. “I’m not fidgeting.”

Bee slowly nodded her head. “That’s why you’re playing with your necklace now, right?”

Moira dropped her hand from the strands of faceted jet beads. “Right. Sorry, I’m just wondering when Tom is going to show up.”

One of Bee’s perfectly shaped eyebrows arched. “You think he’s going to pay attention to you tonight? With all these people here?”

Moira’s eyes widened at the verbal slap. “Wow, you got bitchy. Who peed in your tequila?”

“I’m just saying, honey. He’s a celebrity, and you’re not, and you’re fine to flirt with, but he’s got an image to maintain, and you’re not it.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“He’s not going to date anyone who’s not a celebrity and drop-dead gorgeous.”

Moira’s brows furrowed as her heart lurched between wounded and confused. “How are things going with Zach, sweetie?”

Bee threw her hair over her shoulder as she turned to scan the room full of people. “Fine, why?”

“Because you used to be Tom’s biggest fan in the world and now you’re casting some serious shade and I’m wondering if maybe your opinion of all celebrities has changed because Zach didn’t live up to your wildest dreams.”

Bee drummed her nails against the table a few times. “He leaves for New York tomorrow.”

Moira put her hand over Bee’s and squeezed. “You knew he wasn’t going to stay in London.”

“Well, yeah, but I thought maybe we could work out something long distance.”

“Well, maybe you can.”

Bee shook her head and then took a drink of her cocktail. “He said he’s not interested in a long distance relationship.”

“Well, that’s too bad, but, I mean, you had to sort of know that was going to happen.”

Bee glared at her and Moira pulled her hand away. “No, I didn’t. I’ve always been able to get my way in the past.”

“And you thought he was going to do what, move to London for you? Isn’t he on Broadway right now?”

“Well, like after the play’s over. Or something.” Bee shrugged and pulled out her compact to check her makeup. “He doesn’t even want long distance.”

“So since you didn’t get your way with Zach, you think Tom’s going to toss me over?”

“I’m just saying, don’t set your heart on happily ever after with him. He’ll be fine for a bit of slap and tickle, but he’s going to marry someone like Maria Sharapova.”

Moira picked up her martini and took a sip. She had no idea why she’d ordered a martini. Maybe because martinis seemed fancy and sophisticated – I mean, they were the drink of James Bond after all – and she didn’t feel like an adult but desperately wanted to look like one? Twenty had started off with a bang and she wanted to keep the upward momentum, but right now she wished she had just gotten a glass of wine. She turned her back on Bee, not wanting to stir that pot anymore, and scanned the crowded room one more time. Her eyes caught Tom’s as he was talking to someone right inside the main entrance. She smiled and he smiled back and winked at her before he went back to paying attention to the person he was with.

Moira took a deep breath and another swallow of her drink. He knew she was here, he knew where she was; now it was up to him.

“Well, you have fun waiting to see if he comes around. I’m going to go get another drink.”

She watched Bee flirt her way towards the bar and went back to listlessly stirring her drink. She hadn’t told Bee that she’d slept with Tom. She hadn’t told anyone. Not that anyone was likely to believe her. I mean, she’d been there and she’d barely believed it had happened. As wonderful as it had been, there was also an undercurrent of regret to the memory as well. She’d been so determined to not be an easy lay, and she hadn’t, until someone had actually been nice to her and then she’d hopped right into bed. He had definitely made her toes curl, but in her heart, she felt like she’d rushed things. She had been in such a hurry to show that there was nothing wrong with her, just the men she had known, that she’d skipped over all the lovely anticipation. She’d known him for under two weeks now, and had been on speaking terms with him for less than that, and had no idea if he actually was interested in anything long-term or if it had been part of his seduction. God, could he be seductive. All he had to do was breathe. Maybe she was acting like someone just days out of their teens. She took another swallow of her drink and carefully put the drink down as her hand shook.

“What’s got you looking so glum, my best beloved? The film that bad?”

The words slid along her ear and Moira smiled. “Absolutely horrid. And I don’t know who they got to play that Loki guy, but he was a hack.” She sipped her drink, her hands now steady and turned to face him with a grin. “You were amazing.  Just phenomenal. A complete and total shit, but phenomenal.”

He laughed, his tongue between his teeth. “You should become a movie critic. I think that’s the most apt review I’ve ever gotten. Now,” he held out his arm, “come with me. There’s someone you need to meet.”

Moira hooked her arm through his. He’d led her five steps across the floor before she stopped, rooted to the ground. “It’s not your parents, is it?”

His laughter rang out again at the look of absolute horror on her face. “No, my mum and dad normally skip this kind of thing. They were here earlier for the showing, but they left. I’m not sure you really need to meet my parents quite yet.”

Moira nodded and started walking again. She didn’t think she needed to meet his parents either, but the little inklings of doubt were starting to leave dark fingerprints behind as they crawled through her brain. Did he not want to introduce her to his parents? Tom nodded to a bouncer who unhooked the velvet rope line from the stanchion and led her up a few stairs to the VIP area. He stopped at the top of the steps and put his hands on her shoulders. “Now, remember, you promised not to throw spare change at him.”

Moira clasped her hands over her nose and mouth. “You are  _not_  introducing me to Chris Hemsworth.”

“Of course I am. He’s one of my best mates and I want you to meet him.”

 Moira peeked around Tom to look at Chris and then closed her eyes. “Please tell me you didn’t tell him what I said about him.”

“Of course not. I don’t want him knowing that my girl thinks he’s sexier than I am.”

Her eyes flew open. “I don’t, truly. I was just saying that because I still thought you were a jerk.”

“You think I’m sexy?” His grin emphasized his cheekbones and Moira melted a bit inside.

“Yes, you unrepentant panderer. Me and every other heterosexual woman in the world.” She smoothed her hand over the lapel of his tuxedo.

“It’s your opinion that matters, though.” He brushed his thumb across her cheek and leaned in towards her. “I’ve missed you the last few days.”

Moira swallowed against the lump in her throat and smooshed the lingering doubts back into the cobwebbed closets of her brain. “I’ve missed you too.”

“Now, let me introduce you to people before I kiss you in full view of the cameras that I’m sure are in here.” He led her over to a group of people sprawled in plush tufted sofas surrounding a table littered with drinks and trays of food. “Everyone, this is my girlfriend Moira.”

 Moira pushed down a squeak that would have been appropriate coming from a mouse that had just been trod upon.  _Girlfriend!_

“Moira, you’ve met Zach,”

Zach stood and hugged her. “Met, had dinner with, punched.”

“No, Bee’s the one who punched you, and you deserved it.”

Zach’s face screwed into an expression of shame. “I did.”

“And this is Chris and his wife Elsa, and Natalie and her husband Benjamin.”

Greetings were exchanged and Natalie and Benjamin stood. “We were just leaving. Take our seats.”

“So where’s Bee?” Zach asked, once Tom and Moira were seated. “I thought she was coming with you.”

“She’s around here somewhere. I think she’s pissed off at you, though. She’s definitely pissed off at somebody.”

Zach’s head fell forward as his shoulders slumped. “Is she really mad?”

Moira nodded. “She got all snippy with me and that’s the first time that’s happened since I’ve known her.”

Tom’s hand closed over hers. “I thought you’d only known her a few months. That you met at university.”

“No, we met when she was an exchange student in Portland. I was a sophomore in highschool. She knocked into me coming out of a classroom and then later that day I rescued her from a handsy football player. American football, not soccer. We’ve been friends ever since. She’s the one that gave me the courage to come to London for school. I don’t think I could have come if I hadn’t had one friend here.”

“I’m going to go find her.” Zach unfolded himself from the sofa and excused himself to go look for Bee.

“So, Moira, how long have you and Tom been dating?” Elsa asked.

“Not long.” She looked at him. “That’s the first time he’s ever called me his girlfriend, actually.”

Elsa shook her head and reached for the bottle of sparkling water on the table. “Oh, you’re brave coming to one of these things this early.”

“Brave?”

Chris patted her shoulder. “Don’t scare her. She’ll be fine.”

Moira looked from the two of them to Tom and then back. “What are you talking about?”

“The media loves to speculate about who Tom is dating. I’d take separate cabs home if I were you.”

Lines started to appear across Moira’s forehead. “We live in the same building. That’s how we met.”

“Well, don’t go in or out of the building at the same time.”

Tom leaned forward. “Elsa, please, can we just enjoy ourselves?”

“Fine, but you remember what happened to your last girlfriend after she got photographed with you at Wimbledon. How long before she couldn’t deal with the scrutiny? Less than a week?”

“This isn’t being broadcast on BBC1, either. Can we all just have a drink and talk about something else?”

Moira ordered a glass of wine this time, and settled against Tom as he wrapped his arm around her shoulders. A quick glance over her shoulder let her know that they half wall around their area shielded them from any inquiring glances or cameras. Despite the alarming start, the chatter started to flow and Moira quickly felt at ease with Chris and Elsa. Zach came back about twenty minutes later and shook his head at Moira’s inquiring glance. She was going to have to hijack Bee between classes tomorrow to find out what was irritating her so. Other people came and went, most of whom looked at least vaguely familiar, to congratulate Tom and Chris on their film. She checked her phone while Tom was talking to someone she knew she should know and realized it was already one in the morning.

When he turned back to her, she whispered, “I need to go. I’ve got classes in the morning.”

“You can’t miss this once?”

She shook her head. “No, I really can’t. But I don’t have to work in the afternoon if you want to do something. Maybe get some lunch?”

He nodded. “Let me walk you out.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Yes, I do. I am going to fetch you a cab and make sure that you’re safely away and then you’ll text me when you get home.”

Moira laughed but acceded to his demands. They paused in the dimly lit lobby to say a final goodbye. Tom kissed her softly. “I really have missed you the last few days.”

Moira smiled, reassured by his words once more. “It wasn’t the best timing on our part, was it?”

“Tomorrow though, just me and you.”

He kissed her again, and Moira slid her arms around his neck for a moment before she pulled back. “Me and you.”


	14. Chapter 14

Tom stroked his fingers through Moira’s hair, the slightly rough texture reminding him of his own when it had undergone one too many dye jobs in a row. Her head rested on his shoulder as they watched a film together, though watched was probably too strong of a word. They had mostly been talking about books and music and the cinema, comparing lists of favorites that gave you a better indication of someone’s personality than much more serious conversations would, especially when it turned to ‘Things you love that you know you shouldn’t but do anyway.’ Nothing bonds two people faster than discovering a mutual love of poorly dubbed Japanese monster movies. She’d stopped chattering away about twenty minutes ago and instead was tracing a labyrinth on his thigh. She was so preoccupied that she didn’t even laugh at one of the funniest lines in the film.

“What’s got you so pensive this afternoon, darling?”

Moira tilted her head to look up at Tom, not used to his soothing voice inquiring after her well-being. “I’m worried about Bee. She wasn’t herself last night and then she completely avoided me this morning and won’t answer her phone. Maybe she fell really hard for Zach or something, but I have this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach like something’s really wrong.”

Tom laced his fingers through hers, partly to soothe her, partly to get her to stop drawing on his leg. Twenty minutes of her nail tracing over the same spot was making the skin tender. “Is there something you can do to help?”

She pursed her lips as she shook her head. “Not without knowing what’s wrong. If she doesn’t talk to me by tomorrow I’m going to her apartment and pounding on her door until she lets me in.”

“It worked with me.” His cheeky grin earned him a kiss.

“It’s been a crazy two weeks. From pounding on your door to pounding the headboard against the wall.”

“Things did get a little bit,” he paused as his hand trailed from her hair down her neck and his fingers brushed against the low neckline of her shirt, always managing to get distracted by her cleavage, “vigorous, didn’t they?”

She blinked several times, the whispery quality of his voice having the peculiar quality of paralyzing her vocal cords. Combined with the feel of his fingertips brushing over the swell of her breasts just inside her shirt, it took her a few moments for her to regain function in most of her body. She grabbed his hand and held it still between her hands in her lap.

“I’m sorry. Was that too forward of me?”

She squeezed his hand, staring at it rather than meeting the concern growing in his eyes.

“Moira, please tell me what you’re thinking. I can’t actually read minds. That’s one superpower I am afraid I don’t possess.”

Her smile was only visible in the way it shifted her cheeks as she didn’t lift her head.

“I,” she took a deep breath and Tom watched her chest rise and fall. It was like ocean, inviting, soothing, lulling him into a comfortable daze. He was jarred back to attention when she let go of his hand and hugged herself.”I sort of feel like I jumped into this really fast. Like, I wasn’t going to be an easy lay so I tried to prove that all men were asses. But then you weren’t, so I just dropped my panties for the first nice guy to come along.”

“Is that what I am? Just a nice guy?” He kept playing with her hair. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d kissed a girl with short hair outside of filming, and the flow of it over his hand, the way it kept escaping his grasp hypnotized him as he weaved the blonde strands through and around his fingers.

“No, and that’s the thing. I know you’re this incredible man and… remember when I ran out of there that night we did the Henry V? It was because I realized how perfect you are. That night – up until the point I wanted to punch you in the dick – was perfect. You’re funny and smart and insanely talented and good looking and the only thing wrong with you is that your Disney prince is a villain instead of a good guy, but I feel like I rushed into your bed.”

He tilted his head as he looked at her. He had to remind himself how young she was, and that for all her attitude, she was rather inexperienced in the ways of the world. “So you want us to slow down? Wait a while before we have sex again?”

“No!”

It amused him that his little sass pistol could actually blush such a bright shade of pink and he laughed, his head thrown back, that characteristic ehehehe laugh that Moira had come to know so well already.  

She covered her mouth with her hand. “Sorry, that came out a little loud. I definitely do  _not_ want to stop having sex with you. I’m kind of proud of myself for not having taken you clothes off all ready, in fact. Maybe just,” she shrugged and fiddled with the giant agate ring on her middle finger, “make out more. Like, long makeout sessions on the couch or something, where we see how much fun we can have with our clothes on. Or something.”

Her faltering words clued him in on the source of her discomfort. “You feel like you missed out on part of the fun, don’t you?”

“Yeah. We kind of went from zero to sixty really fast. I want to know what forty-five feels like, too.”

“That’s something I am definitely willing to help you with.” He stroked her hair back from her face. “You don’t have a lot of experience with this sort of thing, do you?”

She blushed again. “Was it that painfully obvious?”

“Oh no, I’m not talking about how you were in bed because you were lovely.” He kissed her softly, appalled that he might have given her that idea about herself. “I was talking about relationships in general. How long has it been since you’ve had a serious boyfriend?”

She snorted. “Do you believe in past lives?”

“That long, huh?”

She rolled her eyes.

“Well, it hasn’t been quite that long for me, but it’s been a while. I’m at a place where I want that again and then I saw you and it turned from a nebulous longing to a very definite and focused desire.”

Moira smiled as Tom’s eyes dropped from hers to focus a bit lower. “And what is it focused on right now?”

“Your lips.” He leaned in to kiss her smile when his mobile buzzed alarmingly.

Moira jumped back. “What kind of setting is that?”

Tom stood and grabbed his phone from his pocket. “That’s the ‘it’s an emergency’ sound.” He tapped the screen and held the device to his ear.

“Hello?”

“Yeah, she’s right here with me.”

He turned around so his back was to her. “No, it’s not on speaker.”

Tom ran his hand through his hair, disheveling the curls he had spent an hour arranging earlier. “With what?”

He froze. “You made a sex tape?”

Moira’s eyes widened. She had no idea who he was talking to, but that was never a good thing to hear.

Tom turned and looked at her and his eyes narrowed. “No, I didn’t think you would. Have you talked to your lawyer?”

Moira stood up. “Should I go?” She mouthed the words and pointed at the door. He held up a finger and she waited, feeling awkward as she eavesdropped.

“Thanks for the warning. I’ll see what I can do at this end.” He hung up the phone and put it back in his pocket and then folded his arms across his chest.

“So are you in on this too or are you running a different con?”

“In on what?”

“Bee blackmailing Zach.”

“That was Zach? Wait, what?” Her head whirled as all the pieces snapped into place and made a painfully clear image. “Bee and Zach made a sex tape?”

“Zach didn’t know he was in one,” his pronunciation was impeccably precise, “but apparently yes, there’s now film of Zach and Bee having sex.” He looked at the floor and then back up at her. “Did you make one of us?”

Her jaw dropped wide open and then it clenched shut as her nostrils flared. “No! I would never do that!”

“Really? You’ve played so many roles in the time we’ve known each other that I have no idea what you’d do.”

She felt like a fish as her mouth opened and closed at the unfairness of the accusation. “How would I have made a sex tape? We had sex in your apartment. I’d never been in your room until you carried me there. Where would the camera have been?” She was trying to be logical when she really wanted to brain him with that pretentious bust of Shakespeare he had sitting on his bookshelf.

He easily returned her volley. “You could have put it in there when you used the loo. Was that your deal? Flip through all the characters you’ve rehearsed, cranky misanthrope in her tiny pyjamas, runner, sexy librarian, Shakespearean actress, sappy drunk, slutty drunk, and shy mostly virginal girlfriend until you found a combination that worked to get me to fuck you?”

She took a deep breath and made herself stand still so she wouldn’t look like a bull pawing at the ground, getting ready to charge the dangerously stupid matador who kept waving a flaming red flag at her. “If all I wanted was for you to fuck me we would have done it on my birthday, you moron. You don’t really believe that I was planning to do that, do you?”

His jaw twisted to the side as he paced the floor. “I don’t know. Even if it wasn’t for black mail, I can think of plenty of people who pay for it. I have an army, you know.”

His sneering response added fuel to the fire already burning through her self-control. “Don’t you  _dare_ talk about your fans like that,” she hissed. “The ones I’ve met have been so nice and genuinely interested in your career.”

“So you’ve been talking to my fans? Hitching your wagon to the star already, are you?”

She felt like a fish again. How could he be so casually cruel? “It was at the premiere! Who else was I going to talk to, you fuckwit?”

“Do you have a buyer yet? ‘Tom Hiddleston Popped My Cherry’ should be a good title. Or were you faking that the way you’ve faked everything else?”

The anger left to be replaced by frozen pain. Her heart stopped beating for a stomach-dropping second and her blood stilled in her veins. “You fucking bastard.” Each syllable felt like a brick as it shot off her tongue.

His eyes were ice and there was no comfort for her there anymore. “It’s not like you bled or anything. All I have for it is your word.”

She blinked back the tears burning her eyes. “The hymen doesn’t work like that you colossally stupendous blithering idiot. God, I was right when I called you a dickfungus. How in the hell could you possibly think I would betray someone like that?”

“Bee sure seemed all nice and innocent on the outside and look what she did. I already know you’re poor. Is that how you were planning on financing your next year of university? Find out you’ve got a posh neighbor and take him to the cleaners? Keep him guessing as you reel him in bit by bit?”

Moira was finished trying to reason with him and yelling at him hadn’t proved any more successful. She bit her lip for a minute and then shook her head in defeat. “You know what? Fuck you. Fuck you and fuck the fucking horse you rode in  _The Hollow Crown_ and the one you rode in  _War Horse_  and just for good measure, fuck the one you rode in  _Thor_  too. Fuck it all. I’m done.” She slammed the door behind her as she left. She didn’t even make it to the staircase before she broke down crying. She didn’t even have a friend she could call. In the course of a single phone call, she’d lost the only two she had.


	15. Chapter 15

The slam of the door echoed in the flat and faded to silence. Tom was left with just the pounding of his blood in his ears as he stared at the door in the emptiness. Moira had taken all the oxygen from his lungs when she left, and the hiccupped sob she had fought back as she left had stolen all of his anger. It took him just that long, a few contractions of that muscle that in anyone else would be a heart but in him was a poisoned apple, to run after her.

He threw open the door and found her standing in the hall, her shoulders heaving as she sobbed, crying so hard she couldn’t even walk. He had broken her, the girl that had stood up to him, gone toe to toe over too much noise, the one who had inspired him to change the heroine’s name in a Shakespearean play to her own.

He pulled her to his chest and wrapped his arms around her. She pounded her fists on his chest, yelling at him to let her go, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t let her go, not like this, not broken. All he could say was, “I’m sorry,” over and over again. No, that wasn’t all he could say. “I’m an asshole. I know I am. I was angry at Bee and I took it out on you and it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right and I’m sorry. I’m sorry, darling. I’m so sorry.”

“You’re an awful person,” she choked out, her face red, not from blushing this time, but from her tears. The heat of her cheeks radiated from her, palpable even through his shirt.

“I know. I am and it’s the truth and I’m sorry. I’ve had some pretty shitty luck with women since I got really famous and you’re too good to be true and I got that phone call and it was like the gods had decided to fuck me over again.”

She shook her head and sniffed several times, trying to get herself back under control. “The gods don’t care about you that much, you egotistical maniac. They don’t care about any of us that much.”

“Please. Come back in my flat with me. Let me explain. Please, my best beloved, let me fix this.”

She pushed him away and now that she was fighting him again instead of crying he let her go. “How are you supposed to fix being an asshole? That’s not like having a button fall off. It’s not a flesh wound. You just ripped out my heart.”

“Please.” He fell to his knees and clasped his hands in front of him. “I’ll beg. I’ll grovel. I’ll do anything you ask. Just let me leave you less broken than you are in this moment. I know you’ll never want to date me again, but please, just let me try and repair some of the damage I’ve done.”

She stared at him for several seconds. The tears in his eyes tore at her. She wanted to tell him no, to leave him hurting a fraction of the amount he had hurt her but she couldn’t. Part of her wanted him to fix it, but mostly she couldn’t let him suffer when she had it in her power to prevent it.  “Tell me here. I’m not going back in your flat.”

“Alright.”

She stepped back so that the wall was right behind her, putting as much space between the two of them as she could and he crossed his legs in front of him, staying on the floor. “I got famous really fast, and I didn’t know how to handle it. All of a sudden I went from the gangly curly headed guy that had to work to get any attention from women to the movie star that had girls throwing themselves at him. And I took advantage of that.”

“So you fucked your way through your fandom.” Moira was not about to mince any words, not after the things he had said.

Tom pulled at his shirt and then smoothed it down his chest. “Pretty much. All of a sudden I could have a different girl every night and they would do anything, and I mean  _anything_  I asked–,”

Moira coughed. “Is this your idea of an apology? Because if so you really suck at it.”

“No, you’re right. I’m sorry.” He stopped and organized his thoughts for a moment. “I went crazy. And I paid for it. A copy of a video was delivered to Luke.” He stopped and ran his hand through his hair. “It was a sex tape of me with two American girls and uh, well let’s just say that they had some pretty specific fantasies about being slaves for Loki that I helped them fulfill. I had no idea that it had been made but they were asking for money. And to tighten the screws, one of them turned out to be seventeen. Sure as hell didn’t look it, but the law doesn’t care what they look like.”

Moira slid down the wall and collapsed onto the floor. No wonder he was touchy about this. She was practically a replay of his nightmare.

“Lawyers got involved, and I paid a lot of money, and the tape is under a gag order and lots of legal shit but I stopped having sex with anyone I didn’t know before I got famous. A few friends from school that were up celibacy creek and wanted a paddle, you know? But after a while, I wanted something more than a fuck. I’m a romantic. I want the fireworks and the swirling violins and weak in the knees and all that. So I started dating again, no more one night stands. It never lasts beyond the first public outing though. First time we end up in a picture together, they get bombarded by attention, both negative and positive, and they decide I’m not worth it. Remember Elsa saying how brave you were to be out in public with me so early? The girl I took to Wimbledon dumped me within twenty-four hours because of all the attention. And we barely even touched.  Or there was the one that started selling my stuff on eBay. I lost some good shirts that way. And a girlfriend.”

“You have shitty taste in women.”

“Yes.” He nodded and smoothed his shirt again. “And I went on that press tour for  _Thor: The Dark_ World and in Korea they had me take a girl on a day long date and it was supposed to be perfectly romantic and if I had liked her at all, it would have been. But inside I was angry. I wanted the real deal, not some television farce. That was what I had come home from the night you burst in on me. That trip. You were vibrant and funny and beautiful and it seemed like my luck had changed but that phone call from Zach, and the fear in his voice, the fear and the panic, and I felt responsible for introducing him to Bee and it wasn’t me getting the raw deal, it was my fault that Zach was in this situation and I panicked.”

Moira rolled her eyes at his self-pity. “Did you put Zach’s dick in Bee?”

Tom choked on his tongue. “What?”

Moira enunciated very carefully so that he would understand her. “Did you take Zach’s penis and insert it in Bee’s vagina?”

He rubbed his throat as he looked at her, his face a rictus of confusion. “No.”

“Did you set up the camera and turn it on?”

He let out a breath. He knew where she was going now. “No.”

“Then it’s not your fault, Hiddleston. Stop thinking the world revolves around you. Your dick is impressive but it’s not large enough to actually have things orbit it.”

Tom digested Moira’s latest words of wisdom for a moment. “I’m not sure if I should feel complimented or insulted.”

“Go for insulted. You’re not responsible for the size of your penis, but you are responsible for thinking it’s your fault when things happen you had nothing to do with. And it’s also your fault that you accused me of lying and whoring and scheming and crap. It’s like you suddenly thought I was one of the Medici.”

Tom scooted back so he was leaning against the wall opposite Moira, his legs stretched out in front of him. “You’re right.” He didn’t know what else to say. She was right and he was completely in the wrong. “I managed to alienate the woman that can make Renaissance history references in the middle of an argument and can quote Shakespeare with more fluidity than I can. I know there’s no way I can ever make up for what I said but I want you to know that I don’t actually believe any of it. There’s more Freddy in me than I want to admit sometimes.”

Her brows came together as her nose wrinkled. “Who’s Freddy?”

“One of my characters. He was an asshole. A charming asshole. He wasn’t good at relationships either.”

She rolled her eyes again. She seemed to be doing that a lot this afternoon. “Well, if I was going to give you two suggestions they would be to stop assuming everyone’s seen everything you’ve been in, and then stop insulting people. I mean, that’s pretty general stuff, but apparently they don’t cover that in your Classics courses. Though really, Narcissus and Arachne? You should have covered that.”

“Apparently I wasn’t a very good student.”

“And being poor? What kind of assholey thing to pick on is  _that_ , Mr. UNICEF?”

“I was trying to figure out why you would be involved in something like this.” He shrugged his shoulders and looked at his lap, ashamed of himself. “Maybe you needed money,” he said quietly.

“Why do you think I’m poor?”

He looked up at her. “You said you were.”

She looked at him askance. “No I didn’t.”

“Yes you did. You said that you knew this was a posh flat in a building filled with something about Viking gold.”

She tried not to laugh but the small smile that emerged against her best efforts relieved a little of the weight on his heart. “I said I wasn’t rich like  _you_. There’s a difference between being your kind of crazy money get paychecks with seven figures rich and my level of middle-class financial stability. I couldn’t afford to live in this building on my own money, but I’m not poor.”

“But…

“What?”

“You’re living on rice and frozen vegetables. I put your groceries away that day and that’s all you had.”

This time she couldn’t stop the laughter. “Honey, you don’t get curves like this on rice and peas. I was doing that UNICEF challenge thing you did, about living below the poverty line. I wasn’t about to let you be morally superior to me.”

“I’m obviously not morally superior to you. Or to anyone right now.”

They looked at each other, the few feet of carpeting separating them wider than an ocean. “I’ll help you get ahold of Bee. Like if you need her number or address or anything for the police. I think this is why she was avoiding me today. She was trying to keep me out of it.”

Tom nodded. “I’m sorry that you got mixed up in whatever she’s doing. You deserve better than that.”

“I do. And I deserve better than how you treated me today, too.”

Tom’s hopes sank like Atlantis. There had been a tiny part of him that had held on to the dream that she would forgive him and give him another chance. “I know. And I’ve said it so many times it has lost meaning by now, but I’m sorry. I’ll always be sorry.”

She stood up and looked at him, biting the inside of her lip. “I can forgive you. I’ve said things without thinking before and we all have those things that make us freak out. I don’t know if I can forget though. I don’t know how to forget the sound of your voice when it said those things.”

Tom nodded and stood up. “If you do, if you ever do, please let me know.”

“Goodbye, Tom.”

“Goodbye, my best beloved.”


	16. Chapter 16

Moira was working on the final draft of a paper when a notification popped up that she had a new email from Tom. Her fingers faltered and slowed and eventually stopped as she stared at the little icon in her status bar. She hadn’t talked to him since yesterday and part of her desperately wanted to know what he had to say even as another part of her told her to ignore it. Finally, knowing she wouldn’t be able to concentrate on her paper until she knew what was in the email, she clicked on the little envelope.

_Moira,_

_I keep thinking about what you said about my voice, that you didn’t know if you could forget it saying awful things. I thought maybe, if you want to try to forget, or if even part of you wants to try, that I might have a solution. I recorded myself reading one of the stories from_ The Jungle Book _for you. I’ve always thought these made perfect bedtime stories. I don’t know if you want to use them like that, but maybe hearing me say something you love might give you the ability to forget and give me another chance to earn your love._

_Tom_

She opened the attached file.

“The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. Chapter one, Mowgli’s Brothers.

_Now Rann the Kite brings home the night_

_That Mang the Bat sets free—_

_The herds are shut in byre and hut_

_For loosed till dawn are we._

_This is the hour of pride and power,_

_Talon and tush and claw._

_Oh, hear the call!—Good hunting all_

_That keep the Jungle Law!_

_Night-Song in the Jungle_

She listened through the opening epigrammatic poem and then paused the recording. She had to finish this paper before she did anything else, but before she went back to editing her writing, she sent Tom a simple message.

_I’m listening._

***

Moira was crossing the campus to the library to return the books she had checked out for her paper when she saw Bee across the quad talking to some boys. She darted across the grass and grabbed her wrist. “We need to talk.”

“Not now, Moira. I’m busy.” She gave Moira the big-eyed sweet smile that was her trademark when she was flirting with boys.

“No, we need to talk right now.”

“Can you excuse us?”  She adjusted the stack of jade bangles she had on one arm. “Apparently my friend is having a moment.”

Moira tugged Bee over to a quiet section of lawn and pulled her down onto a bench. “Not to put too fine a point on it, what the hell is going on?”

Bee combed her fingers through her hair. “What do you mean?”

“A sex tape? You made a sex tape! And now you’re blackmailing Zach with it!”

“I’m not blackmailing him. I’m giving him the opportunity to purchase it first.”

Moira scowled at her erstwhile friend. “Before you sell it to someone else?”

“Naturally.”

“That’s blackmail!”

Bee patted Moira’s shoulder. “That’s capitalism, darling.”

“How could you do this? What were you thinking making that tape anyway?”

Bee blinked several times, as if confused by the question. “I tape everything that goes on in my bedroom.”

“Everything?”

“A girl can’t be too careful these days. It’s my protection. My own little version of Irene Adler.”

Moira sighed and put her head down. Bee had always thought herself a cut above the common folk, but this was a new level of delusional. “You’re not a dominatrix, Bee. You’re a college student.”

“You have no idea what I am, Moira,” Bee hissed, and then took a deep breath, fixing in place the mask that had slipped for a second. When she spoke again, she was back to her normal sweet and smiley demeanor. “Haven’t you figured it out yet? I look all sweet and nice on the outside, and I bat my eyelashes at men and get what I want from them, but I’m a cynic on the inside. You on the other hand, are all rough and cynical on the outside, but sweet and romantic on the inside. You say all the things I’m thinking and can’t say, and I get all the romantic attention you want but are too scared to go after. Together we get to experience everything we want. It’s why we make such good friends.”

Moira’s chin quivered for a moment before she squeezed her lips together. “I can’t be friends with you, Bee. Not if you’re going to do things like this.”

“Why not? You’re the one who always says that all men want is an easy lay. So I make them pay for it a bit. What’s the harm in that? I’m levelling the playing field for women.”

“You blackmailing men is not feminist, Bee. It’s a crime.”

Bee’s jaw clenched and her nostrils flared. “If they didn’t want people to know that they had sex with me, then maybe they shouldn’t fuck me.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t fuck people as a form of income!”

“Why not? You don’t mind it when I spend my money on things for you. Make sure to send the bartender at  _Charlie’s_ a thank you note for your birthday present. Send it to the pub though, and not his home. Wouldn’t want the wife to find out.”

Moira felt like a fish again. Bee’s behavior was so far beyond any of her expectation that she had no idea what to say. “So this is how you make a living?”

“Better than working in a library. A lot more fun.”

“At least I don’t hurt people.”

“Hey, I found a way to make money doing something I enjoy. Isn’t that what everyone wants?” She tossed her hair and looked away from Moira.

“Then become a prostitute or a porn star. At least that way people know what they’re getting. You’re lying to all these people.”

Bee turned on Moira, her face distorted by derision. “Oh, like your little ‘I’m so drunk let’s fuck’ routines aren’t you lying to people? At least I actually follow through.”

“I don’t have ulterior motives. You’ve got an entire other game going on that these people don’t even know they’re playing.”

“It’s always a game, Moira. You should have learned that by now. It’s all about what you have and what you can trade it for. Don’t be stupid and give your heart away for a few sweet words and a smile.”

Bee sat back, physically taken aback at this mercenary side of her friend. She had always admire Bee’s ability to pursue whatever she wanted romantically. She had seemed so brave. “So that was your plan from the first time you met Zach? To trade a roll in the hay for what? What did you even ask for?”

Bee hesitated for the first time in the conversation and pushed her hair back behind her ear. “Zach was different. I really liked him and I thought he liked me too. But I guess he was just like Danny. All he wanted was a fuck.”

“Danny?” Moira blinked several times as she tried to figure out who Bee was talking about. And then her eyes began to widen. “You’re doing this because of  _Danny Buckner_?”

Bee had the good sense to look embarrassed. “Yes, Danny Buckner.”

Moira’s face contorted like she had just gotten a mouthful of spoiled milk. “You slept with _Danny Buckner_?”

“He was my first. I thought he really liked me too. Apparently he just wanted to bang a foreign chick. He taught me the most important lesson of my life – sex isn’t anything more than an exchange of bodily fluids. So now I make it a bit more than that. I make it valuable again.”

“By making people literally pay for it.”

Bee had recovered her hard-coated exterior. “What, like you haven’t been making every man pay for Timothy Medlin telling you that he thought you would be an easy lay because you’re fat? The money looks better on me than the bitterness does on you, and I’m having a good sex life to boot.”

Moira bit her lips together to keep the hurt from showing. “Please stop doing this. I know you’re hurting, but this is just going to make it worse. Releasing that sex tape is going to ruin your life.”

“Or make me famous.”

“You don’t want that kind of fame, Bee.”

Bee stood up and adjusted her shirt. “What would you know about fame? You barely take your nose out of a book.”

Moira didn’t know where this venom was coming from. She hadn’t done anything wrong to earn this kind of treatment. “I thought we were friends. I thought you liked me.”

“Oh, honey. I don’t like anyone. Even myself.”

Moira didn’t know what to say as she watched Bee walk away. She didn’t see her on campus again.

***

Each evening as Moira sat studying, a notification of a new email from Tom would pop up on her screen.  The first time it happened she was surprised. She hadn’t thought he was going to send any more stories, but each evening delivered a new chapter of  _The Jungle Book_ with its poem, even without her responding to any of them. Those emails were the highlight of her day. She hadn’t heard from Bee again, and while she was making friends with other people at school, there wasn’t anyone she felt comfortable texting or calling yet. She told herself that she’d only been in London a little over two months and that was normal. But in her heart of hearts she was lonely, and she began to wonder if Bee had been right about her bitterness chasing people away, friends as well as anything more romantic. After a week, he had finished reading her  _The Jungle Book_ , and she didn’t know whether or not she would be receiving a story that night. She sat anxiously watching her computer while she pretended to study and when the soft ding sounded telling her she had a new e-mail she dove for her laptop.

She clicked on the attached file and in a few seconds, his voice filled the room and, if she was honest with herself down deep in the heartiest center of her heart, it filled in those empty places too.

“The Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling. How the Whale Got His Throat. In the sea, once upon a time, O my Best Beloved, there was a Whale, and he ate fishes.”

My best beloved. His name for her since before they had even kissed. He had given her so much leeway to be horrible to him, to insult him, to accuse him of molesting barnyard animals, and it hadn’t scared him at all. Confused him, but not actually scared him. What he had done had been worse, she knew that, but he’d been dealt a crappy hand, and he had recovered quickly. Maybe she could just buy him a watermelon to yell at when he was having a bad day in the future. She kept rewinding the track and listening to him say those words, O my Best Beloved, and she knew that even though it was Kipling talking to a child a long time ago, when Tom said them he was talking to her.

She was on her feet before she knew what was happening. His voice was still playing over the speakers of her laptop as she went out the door and ran up the stairs. She was pounding on his door and when he opened it, she took one step and wrapped her arms around him. He rested his chin on her head as he held her, biting his bottom lip, his eyes closed so he could concentrate on the feel of her in his arms again.

“This time,” she said as she sniffled, “we’re going to take it slow.”

“As slow as you want.”


	17. Chapter 17

Tom looked over at Moira as she sat at the other end of the sofa, one of her textbooks open on her lap. She hadn’t turned a page in the last twenty minutes, instead occupying her time by looking at him, gnawing on her upper lip, and then quickly looking back down at her book if he raised his head from the latest pages of script revisions del Toro had sent him. His hand stroked idly against her calf as he read. He’d gotten used to the domesticity of his situation over the past few weeks. He would meet her each morning as they headed out the doors, kiss goodbye, and he would go for his run in one direction and she would go in hers. And then the first one home that night would text the other. If she got home first she would cook something for dinner and they would spend the evening on her sofa. The nights he got home from rehearsals before she made it back from school or the library, he would wait for her text letting him know she was catching the tube before calling for take away and they would spend the evening on his sofa. Most of their sofa time was vertical, though the percentage of horizontal time had been slowly increasing as the days of their companionship added up in a steady accumulation of shared moments, laughter, and Moira asking him to translate British television show references she didn’t get.

Tonight though, she had been quiet over dinner and instead of slipping easily into her studies, she had been fidgety. He was fairly certain she had examined each individual strand of her hair for split ends, pulling it front of her face so she could use it as an excuse to stare at him while not actually staring at him. Her toes kneaded his thigh like a cat settling in for a rest and he finally put down the script and turned to her. “What’s on your mind, darling?”

Those beautiful expressive brows of hers rose like a flock of panicked starlings as she looked everywhere but at him. He simply waited for her to look at him again. He had gotten good at waiting.

She stared at the ceiling so long he thought she was going to get a crick in her neck before she darted a glance at him. He smiled peacefully and her chin started to lower back to its normal angle.  She still didn’t look at him, choosing instead to address the lamp behind him. “If I show you something I wrote, will you tell me what you think? Not as a boyfriend, but like, honest thoughts. Critique it seriously.”

Tom kept the mental tantrum he was throwing from showing on his face.  This was even worse than that hypothetical ‘does this outfit make my butt look big’ question that he’d never been asked. He would rather that she’d have pulled the pin out of a live grenade and lobbed it at him. He smiled at her. “Of course.”

She reached under the sofa and pulled out a green journal, flipped through the pages and folded it back to the page she wanted him to read and then, grimacing with her eyes closed, she held it out to him. The notebook trembled.  She watched his eyes skim over the first few lines and then arose and left the room.

Tom sped through the first stanza and then stopped and went back to the beginning and read carefully. When he got to the end of the poem, he immediately started it over, speaking the lines out loud. He finished it and looked around. “Moira?”

She peeked out from the hallway, partially covering her face with her hand.

“Come here, darling.” He held out a hand to her.

She extended one leg, toe carefully pointed, into the room, and took that one step before she stopped.

He licked the center of his top lip as he chuckled. “You don’t need to be scared. I thought it was really good.”

Just one eyebrow ascended this time. “Really?”

“Yes. It feels like it was written by a young Pablo Neruda.”

She pointed her finger at him like it was a gun. “You shut your stupid liar mouth.”

“What?”

She waved her finger about in a way that, were it a gun, would have sent everyone diving to the floor. “Pablo Neruda is my favorite poet and you just shut your stupid liar mouth to compare me in any way positive to him.”

He laughed and smoothed his hand over his shirt. He knew exactly the affect that had on women. “If you want me to shut my mouth you’re going to have to make me.”

And _there_ was the crackle of electricity between them that he had expected. She stepped forward instinctively. She was definitely going to make him shut his mouth, but then her second step faltered and stopped. Her mouth pursed into a rosebud as she glared at him. “This is just one of your tricks to get me to kiss you, isn’t it, Hiddles?”

He laughed and patted the sofa next to him. “Perhaps.”

She sat down and drew her knees up to her chest. “You really like it?”

“I think it’s powerful. I love the image you have about tying the winds to your will and then the idea of your lungs as your sails. This stanza here, though,” he trailed his finger down the page until he found the one he was looking for, “there are too many syllables in the fourth and the seventh lines. I know you’re not doing a fixed rhythm, but when you read it out loud, it stumbles there.”

Her head fell back against the padded damask sofa. “I know! I’ve rewritten that blasted stanza so many times trying to get it to read correctly.”

He turned towards her, his calf pressing against her thigh, and smoothed her hair back from her face. “Do you write poetry often?”

“Maybe?” she squeaked.

“Why are you embarrassed by that? I think it’s wonderful that you write.”

“Writing isn’t the problem. It’s the telling other people you write poetry that’s a problem.”

“Why is that a problem?”

“Because if it sucks then you have people laughing at you, but if it’s good then maybe you should show it to other people that aren’t friends and nice and then they can decide whether or not to publish it or send you cruel, sterile letters of rejection that crush your very soul down to the atomic level and make you wonder why you ever thought you could write at all?” Her eyes were wide and blank as she stared at the post-apocalyptic wasteland of her soul, rejection letters blowing like tumbleweeds in the fallout-heavy wind.

“You do realize that I never got every role I auditioned for, right?”

She rolled her head to the side to look at him. “Yes, but that’s _different_.”

He couldn’t help but laugh. “How?”

“Because like normal people want to be actors and then they try and if it doesn’t work then they go do something else but if it does then they are famous and everybody wants to be their friend and that’s awesome. You know what would happen if I told someone I wanted to be a poet?”

“They would say ‘that’s wonderful!’”

“Nope. They would laugh hysterically. And you know what happens if I actually do get published and stuff?”

“What?”

She poked him in the chest. “I would be a slightly less poor librarian who no one has ever heard of.”

“Or you could be the next Pablo Neruda.”

Her finger gun was back. “I told you to shut your stupid liar mouth.”

“And I told you to make me.”

She grabbed the front of his faded blue t-shirt and pulled him to her and planted one on him. He smiled against her lips and his long fingers stroked along her jaw and her petulant kiss softened as his mouth moved against hers. She finally pulled away, her cheeks flushed and her lips swollen. She reached out a shaky hand and took her notebook from him and shoved it back under the couch.

“We’re going to change the topic now,” she announced with all the dignity of the queen.

His response was decidedly less refined. “You’re not wearing a bra, are you?”

Moira looked down at her chest and then back to Tom, her nose wrinkling. “Uh, no. Why?”

He shrugged and looked away as his cheeks tinted a rosy pink. “No reason.”

“Spill, Hiddleston.”

He shrugged and stared at the ceiling. He could see why Moira had found it so fascinating earlier. “I like it when you don’t wear a bra. Your breasts…jiggle.”

She blinked a few times, slowly, like she was trying to translate in her head a foreign language with which she only had passing familiarity. “My breasts _jiggle._ ”

God she made him feel like a boy sometimes.  Get your act together, man. They’re breasts. You’ve seen them before. You’ve seen _hers_ before. Grow. Up. “It’s good. They move and sway with you and they’re gorgeous and natural and tempting and it makes me want to play with them. They are so lovely. It’s one of the first things I fancied about you, your delectable breasts.”

She sat back and crossed her arms over the lovely breasts in question. “Really? You liked me for my breasts?”

“Well at first. Your brain was rather busy throwing the most abominable comments at me, so it took me a bit longer to fancy that part of you. Your hips were close behind your breasts though.”

She leaned forward and sniffed at the air between them. “Are you drunk?”

“No. Should I be? Would this be more charming if I were?” He loved flirting with her. Was that weird? He loved the banter. He could _feel_ his eyes sparkling and he wasn’t even doing it on purpose this time; it was just how he responded to her.

She snorted and shook her head. “No, this is plenty charming as it is.”

“So, can I see them?”

Moira narrowed her eyes.

“Please? I’ve missed them the last few weeks.”

“And whose fault is that?”

“Entirely mine. But…please?” He clasped his hands dramatically in front of his chest.

Moira sighed, letting her shoulders slump dramatically before she muttered, “Fine.” She grabbed the bottom of her black tee with both hands and yanked it up, making sure the hem flipped against the underside of her breasts so that they would jiggle. She stared at the ceiling as she silently counted to three and then pulled her shirt back down. “Satisfied?”

Tom let out the breath he had been holding. “No. Never.”

She stuck her tongue out at him. The color was high in her cheeks. Apparently flashing her boyfriend was still a bit adventurous for her. “Tough.”

He decided to push his luck. “Can I touch them?” Good gracious, the color just kicked up a few more shades.

“You’ve already been getting handsy the last few nights.” She was back to talking at the lamp.

“You’re the one who said you wanted to take it slow, so I’m taking it slow.”

She glanced at him before she dropped her eyes to her lap. “And last night, with the…squeezing…of my breasts? That was what, forty-five miles per hour?” She looked up at him through her lashes and he was struck again by the beauty of her eyes.

He slid across the sofa to her and took her hand. Sometimes he needed a boot to the head to remember how inexperienced she actually was under the bluster and attitude. “No, that was only thirty at the most. We’ve both kept all our clothes on. We’re at the most half way to our destination.”

“And me taking off my top and letting you touch my breasts is what?” Her eyelashes trembled as she met his eyes.

“Touch? Thirty five.” He trailed a finger down her neck and then southward, slipping it inside the neckline of her shirt and between her breasts. “Letting me kiss them would be a solid forty.”

She bit the inside of her bottom lip before she slid her hand around the back of his neck and pulled him closer. “Let’s see what the scenery looks like at forty miles per hour tonight.”


	18. Chapter 18

Moira stood outside the building where Tom was rehearsing Coriolanus. She’d never been here before but she desperately needed to talk to him. She shoved thoughts of the class she was skipping to the back of her mind as she texted him with shaking thumbs.

“I need to talk to you as soon as you have a break.”

She paced back and forth on the pavement, the cold leaching through the thin soles of her ballet flats. She wasn’t sure why she had thought she would just be able to walk in to the rehearsal space, but she had and now she was stuck in the fine mist that was almost a drizzle as it condensed on the back of her neck and dripped down between her shoulder blades.

Moira looked at the phone clenched her feet. Twenty minutes and he hadn’t answered. She had no idea when he would. She really had no idea how rehearsals went, other than that he came home exhausted most evenings. She hurried across the street to the little café on the opposite corner and the bell above the door jangled as she entered the cozy teashop. She ordered a cup of coffee and grabbed a table in front of the window that let her keep an eye on the door to the rehearsal space. She pulled her textbook from her backpack. If she wasn’t in class, she could at least get ahead on the reading.

An hour later, she was reading the same paragraph for the fourth time when her phone buzzed and she picked it up. “Hello?”

“What’s up? Your text sounded ominous.”

Moira stuck her finger in the book to hold her place. “Um, do you have a minute where I can see you? I really don’t want to have this conversation over the phone if possible.”

“I’ve got a fifteen minute break. Where are you?”

“Across the street from you having a cup of coffee.”

He laughed before he answered her. “Stalker. I’ll come down and let you in.”

Moira left a tip on the table and hurried back across the street. Tom held the door for her and then kissed her as she pushed her slick hair back.

“What’s got you rattled? You sounded anxious.”

She couldn’t look him in the eye. Instead she focused on his shirt that was clinging to his skin. He was practically as damp as she was, though his was from sweat, not rain. They must have been working on the fight choreography some more. “Bee was waiting for me when I got back to the apartment building from my run this morning.”

He brushed her cheek and bent so he was looking her in the eyes. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah. I was actually relieved at first. I hadn’t heard from her in nearly three weeks and she emptied out her flat and disconnected her phone and I didn’t know what was going on.”

“What did she want?”

She scratched her hand. “She wants me to convince you to make Zach drop the charges. Did you know he had gone to the police?”

“Yes.”

Moira’s eyebrows furrowed. She couldn’t remember the last time she had glared at him. “How long have you known?”

“He did it a few days after she made the demand. What she did is illegal and he’s not going to let her do it to anyone else.”

She dropped her backpack at her feet and leaned back against the wall. “But why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I want to keep you out of it as much as possible.” Tom stepped closer to her and stroked her cheek again. “I don’t want to risk you getting hurt any more than you already have been.”

“I guess that’s sweet of you. I mean, I wish you had told me, but I can understand why you did that.”

“I’m not going to convince Zach to drop the charges, Moira. Your breasts are magnificent,” laughter suffused his words and she tried to smile in response, “but I must put some limits on their persuasive power.”

“She has your phone.”

“No she doesn’t. It’s upstairs.”

“No, I mean, that night we all had dinner at your place, you left your phone out, and she copied everything on it. Photos, contacts, everything.”

He stepped back and Moira closed her eyes against the fear in his face. “Oh god.”

“She said she’s going to make it all public if you don’t get Zach to drop the charges.”

Tom fell back against the other wall and covered his face with his hands. “That’s going to be a disaster,” he muttered.

Moira opened one eye to see how he was doing. “She said the first thing she’ll release is Benedict’s number and address.”

Tom’s hands went from his face to his hair. “There’s the contact information for half of Hollywood and two-thirds of London’s theatre community in there. And I don’t even want to start thinking about the pictures on there. Or the texts.”

“Are there,” Moira started and then stopped. “Never mind. It’s not important.”

He opened his eyes to look at her. “There’s no sex pictures if that’s what you’re worried about, darling. I’ve learned my lesson on that one.”

“She has pictures of us kissing.”

“Does that worry you?”

“No. I mean, I grew up in the Facebook era. Somebody splashing a few pictures of me about isn’t going to matter. I just worry about you. She has your number and your address. She can make your life miserable, and yet I can’t ask you to have Zach drop the charges because somebody has to stop her.” She stared at her feet, at the wet line snaking across the purple fabric. She’d been so upset by meeting Bee that she hadn’t even thought about the rain when she had gotten dressed. She was sure that she must look like a drowned rat. And now she had to be honest with him. “I think we should break up.”

He rocketed off the wall to stand in front of her. “No.”

“Yes. It makes sense Tom. Somebody has to take the fall for this – You were dating someone and one of her friends took advantage of that friendship, but you’re no longer seeing the woman in question and this will never happen again. Yadda yadda yadda. You have to get rid of me and you know it.”

His jaw twisted to the side. “I do not. You’re a person, not a sacrifice.”

“Luke agrees with me.”

His nostrils flared and he suddenly seemed even larger as he loomed in front of her. “You’ve already talked to Luke about this?”

“Yes. He’s your publicist and I didn’t know what she was going to do and I didn’t know how long it was going to be before you got out of rehearsal so I called him so he would be prepared.”

Moira could hear his teeth grinding. “Luke doesn’t get to decide who I’m dating.”

“But I get to decide who  _I’m_  dating, and I’m not going to let you damage the career you’ve spent years working on over me. You and Zach need to be able to do whatever needs to be done to stop Bee without worrying about hurting my feelings, and if you can’t stop her before she goes public and decides to put Steven Spielberg’s phone number on Twitter, I need to have been long gone. You need to come across as proactive here. The problem’s already been dealt with, you installed a new security system on your phone, you’re just mopping up the final few little problems, something like that.”

He glared at her and she had to force herself not to cry. His fist hammered against the wall by her head and she winced. “I hate this!”

“I know. So do I. But it needs to be done.”

“Is this just until things settle down? Or are you actually breaking up with me?”

“Let’s be realistic, Tom. You start previews in a week or so, and then the show eight times a week. We’ll barely get to see each other. And then you’re gone filming Crimson Peak in Toronto for who knows how long. We both like each other a lot, but we’ve only known each other a little more than a month. Maybe, if things with Bee get solved without hitting the media, and when you get back from filming or something?” She shrugged helplessly in the face of all of the doubts she had previously squelched roaring back to life. She stared at the floor, ashamed of the cliché’ she was about to offer, even if it was the bitter truth. “I just think we’re in really different places in our lives right now.”

He stared at her for a long moment and then his shoulders slumped and he stepped back from her. “You’re right. And you deserve a boyfriend who can take you out places without getting stopped by fans or harassed by photographers. You’re too young to be spending every night home on the couch. Of course you’re right.”

She tucked her hair back, fiddling with it to keep her mind occupied and off the pain building in her heart. “If the police need anything from me, like testimony or something, I don’t really know how the legal system works here, I’ll do what I can.” She pulled out a folded piece of paper from her pocket and handed it to him. “This is the contact information for Bee’s parents. They may be able to help as well.”

He paused before he took the paper. “So this is it, then.”

“Yeah. I think it has to be for a while. And I hope everything gets fixed without any more pain.”

“I’ll miss you, Moira.”

“I’ll miss you too.” She stood on her tip toes and kissed him on the cheek before she walked out into the pouring rain.

_The End_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, my lovelies, that is the end. But fear not, Tom and Moira will meet again in the future. Stay tuned for their sequel…


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